Nanosized and tunable design of biosilica particles using novel silica-forming peptide-modified chimeric ferritin templates

Abstract

Biosilica materials can be generated by biomolecules under physiological or mild/ambient conditions. However, nanosized and tunable design method of biosilica particles has not yet been set up. Here, Kps, a silica forming peptide (KPSHHHHHTGAN) was introduced to N-terminus of ferritin via protein fusion method to generate new Kps-modified ferritin (Kps-Fn) for reliable formation of biosilica particles. Then, novel chimeric Kps-Fn was designed for controllable generation of biosilica nanoparticles (NPs). By changing the ratios of Kps-Fn and Fn subunits in the chimeric Kps-Fn templates, desired size of biosilica NPs (100-500 nm) can be achieved. The low surface density of Kps on the chimeric template could lead to the small-sized biosilica NPs with the increased surface area/amount. The biosilica NPs developed here showed better DNA adsorption/elution performance than the commercially available silica NPs. This work is a new way to generate desirable biosilica NPs, which can be applied for the design of various biohybrid nanomaterials. (C) 2019 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.