Protein Cages as Containers for Gold Nanoparticles.

Abundant and highly diverse, viruses offer new scaffolds in nanotechnology for the encapsulation, organization, or even synthesis of novel materials. In this work the coat protein of the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) is used to encapsulate gold nanoparticles with different sizes and stabilizing ligands yielding stable particles in buffered solutions at neutral pH. The sizes of the virus-like particles correspond to T = 1, 2, and 3 Caspar-Klug icosahedral triangulation numbers.

Clustered nanocarriers: the effect of size on the clustering of CCMV virus-like particles with soft macromolecules.

Virus-like particles (VLP) could enable a wide variety of biomedical applications in therapy, drug delivery, and imaging. They are biocompatible and can be self-assembled into larger structured materials for additional functionality and potentially better biodistribution, which is still a challenging aspect. Here we investigate the role of the VLPs size and resulting Caspar Klug symmetry in forming clusters out of these building blocks, showing that the onset point for clustering is determined by steric considerations of the binding site and binding agent.

Viral capsids as templates for the production of monodisperse Prussian blue nanoparticles.

The use of a viral template has allowed the synthesis of monodisperse Prussian blue nanoparticles with a diameter of 18 +/- 1.7 nm and their organization into hexagonal patterns on mica and hydrophilic carbon surfaces.