The self-assembly of virus-like particles may lead to materials which combine the unique characteristics of viruses, such as precise size control and responsivity to environmental cues, with the properties of abiotic cargo. For a few different viruses, shell proteins are amenable to the in vitro encapsulation of non-genomic cargo in a regular protein cage. In this chapter we describe protocols of high-efficiency in vitro self-assembly around functionalized gold nanoparticles for three examples of icosahedral and non-icosahedral viral protein cages derived from a plant virus, an animal virus, and a human retrovirus. These protocols can be readily adapted with small modifications to work for a broad variety of inorganic and organic nanoparticles.
CITATION STYLE
Tsvetkova, I. B., & Dragnea, B. G. (2015). Encapsulation of nanoparticles in virus protein shells. Methods in Molecular Biology, 1252. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2131-7_1
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