Genetic and chemical modifications of Tobacco mosaic virus derivatives for nanotechnology and materials sciences

CIC nanoGUNE Seminars

Speaker

Sabine Eiben, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

When

2011/10/10
13:00

Place

nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian

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Sabine Eiben Molecular Biology and Virology of Plants, Institute of Biology, University of Stuttgart Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is a versatile scaffold for nanotechnological applications. It is a rigid hollow rod of 300 nm length, an outer diameter of 18 nm and a 4 nm wide channnel. It is stable in a broad pH range and at elevated temperatures, and safe for humans and animals as it infects only plants. The nanotubular capsid is assembled from about 2300 identical coat protein (CP) subunits incorporating a genomic RNA strand of 6300 nucleotides. We were able to introduce unique mutations on the CP surface, such as T158K and S3C, which allow chemical coupling of e.g. fluorescent dyes, petide tags, and even complete enzymes using specific linker chemistries. Furthermore, small petides and a scFv antibody fragment directed against a disease marker were genetically fused to the CP, for applications like antigen detection in a medical context, or mineralisation of viral scaffolds for the production of bio/inorganic composite materials. The ability of the TMV CPs to assemble with RNA strands of different length and sequence _via_ a bidirectional process has been exploited not only for the bottom-up fabrication of nanotube arrays on Si wafers, but also for the production of non-linear or branched biotemplate structures. RNA-directed _in vitro_ assembly also has allowed the combination of different CP variants in a single particle. We could show that _E. coli_ -expressed CP variants can be harnessed for mixed assemblies with plant- derived CPs, which renders possible an efficient incorporation of strongly modified CP types of different functionalities into TMV-based carrier rods. First close-to-application tests have demonstrated that accordingly tailored TMV-like particles are suitable to improve magnetoviscosity and shear stability of commercial ferrofluids, or to scaffold ZnO deposition in a chemical bath process, thereby inducing growth of a semiconducting layer under ambient conditions resulting in functional field effect transistors. The following people contributed to the described work: _Hartmut Gliemann 1_, Carlos Azucena1, _Stefan Walheim 2, Thomas Schimmel2, Alexander Bittner3_, Fania Geiger4, Joachim Spatz4, Manuel Gunkel5, Christoph Cremer5, Roland Kontermann6, Zhenyu Wu7, Carl Krill III7, Fabian Eber8, Sven Degenhard8, Anan Kadri8, Anna Müller8, _Holger Jeske 8, Christina Wege_8 1Institut für Funktionelle Grenzflächen (IFG), Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT); 2Institut für Angewandte Physik (IAP) und Centrum für Funktionelle Nanostrukturen (CFN) und Institut für Nanotechnologie (INT), KIT; 3CIC NanoGUNE, San Sebastian, Spain; 4MPI für Intelligente Systeme, Stuttgart; 5BioQuant, Universität Heidelberg; 6Institut für Zellbiologie und Immunologie (IZI), Universität Stuttgart; 7Institut für Mikro- und Nanomaterialien, Universität Ulm; 8Biologisches Institut (BI), Universität Stuttgart.