Computational Protein Design

Nurit Haspel, Jie Zheng, Carlos Aleman, David Zanuy, Ruth Nussinov

Ilan Samish

In recent years there has been increasing interest in nanostructure design based on the self-assembly properties of proteins and polymers. Nanodesign requires the ability to predictably manipulate the properties of the self-assembly of autonomous building blocks, which can fold or aggregate into preferred conformational states. The design includes functional synthetic materials and biological macromolecules. Autonomous biological building blocks with available 3D structures provide an extremely rich and useful resource. Structural databases contain large libraries of protein molecules and their building blocks with a range of sizes, shapes, surfaces, and chemical properties. The introduction of engineered synthetic residues or short peptides into these building blocks can greatly expand the available chemical space and enhance the desired properties. Herein, we summarize a protocol for designing nanostructures consisting of self-assembling building blocks, based on our recent works. We focus on the principles of nanostructure design with naturally occurring proteins and synthetic amino acids, as well as hybrid materials made of amyloids and synthetic polymers.