Introducing a combinatorial DNA-toolbox platform constituting defined protein-based biohybrid-materials

Introducing a combinatorial DNA-toolbox platform constituting defined protein-based biohybrid-materials
Huber MC, Schreiber A, Wild W, Benz K, Schiller SM
Biomaterials. 2014 Oct;35(31):8767-8779. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2014.06.048. Epub 2014 Jul 27.

The access to defined protein-based material systems is a major challenge in bionanotechnology and regenerative medicine. Exact control over sequence composition and modification is an important requirement for the intentional design of structure and function. Herein structural- and matrix proteins provide a great potential, but their large repetitive sequences pose a major challenge in their assembly. Here we introduce an integrative “one-vector-toolbox-platform” (OVTP) approach which is fast, efficient and reliable. The OVTP allows for the assembly, multimerization, intentional arrangement and direct translation of defined molecular DNA-tecton libraries, in combination with the selective functionalization of the yielded protein-tecton libraries. The diversity of the generated tectons ranges from elastine-, resilin, silk- to epitope sequence elements. OVTP comprises the expandability of modular biohybrid-materials via the assembly of defined multi-block domain genes and genetically encoded unnatural amino acids (UAA) for site-selective chemical modification. Thus, allowing for the modular combination of the protein-tecton library components and their functional expansion with chemical libraries via UAA functional groups with bioorthogonal reactivity. OVTP enables access to multitudes of defined protein-based biohybrid-materials for self-assembled superstructures such as nanoreactors and nanobiomaterials, e.g. for approaches in biotechnology and individualized regenerative medicine.