A secondary structure within small peptides guiding spontaneous self-aggregation and nanoparticle formation.

Polyhedrin from baculovirus is a protein that self-aggregates forming a crystal structure known as polyhedra. Baculovirus occluded inside the crystal withstand for years at room temperature retaining infectivity. By investigating the smallest fragment from polyhedrin retaining the self-aggregation properties we identified a 29 amino acid sequence that spontaneously forms nanoparticles.