AUTHOR=Zhang Wenbo , Mo Shanshan , Liu Mingwei , Liu Lei , Yu Lanlan , Wang Chenxuan TITLE=Rationally Designed Protein Building Blocks for Programmable Hierarchical Architectures JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=8 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2020.587975 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2020.587975 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

Diverse natural/artificial proteins have been used as building blocks to construct a variety of well-ordered nanoscale structures over the past couple of decades. Sophisticated protein self-assemblies have attracted great scientific interests due to their potential applications in disease diagnosis, illness treatment, biomechanics, bio-optics and bio-electronics, etc. This review outlines recent efforts directed to the creation of structurally defined protein assemblies including one-dimensional (1D) strings/rings/tubules, two-dimensional (2D) planar sheets and three-dimensional (3D) polyhedral scaffolds. We elucidate various innovative strategies for manipulating proteins to self-assemble into desired architectures. The emergent applications of protein assemblies as versatile platforms in medicine and material science with improved performances have also been discussed.