ABSTRACT
Biomolecular nanostructures derived from living organisms, such as protein cages, fibers, and layers, are drawing increasing interests as natural biomaterials. Viral nanoparticles (VNPs) are protein nanostructures assembled from viral capsid proteins with or without an envelope and often resemble the structure of virus particles. Simian virus 40 (SV40) has been one of the viruses exploited as VNPs for nanobiotechnology development. SV40 VNPs are assembled as cage-like structures from the major capsid protein VP1. Assembly is the principal way to integrate VNPs with chemically synthesized nanomaterials. A variety of inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) of different components, surface coatings, shapes, and sizes have been encapsulated into SV40 VNPs through controllable assembly. NPs can also be loaded onto the outer surface by rationally tuning the interfacial interactions between SV40 VNPs and NPs. Biomineralization is another route for combining VNPs with inorganic NPs, by which noble metal plasmonic NPs with tunable sizes and components have been produced in SV40 VNPs. By controllably assembling these bio-nanohybrid structures, different functionalities have been integrated for nanophotonic studies and bioimaging. These studies have laid a foundation for the development of multifunctional bio-nanomaterials and devices based on the SV40 VNP platform.
