Protein-templated synthesis of metal-based nanomaterials

- Proteins can act as artificial templates to biomineralize a wide array of inorganic materials.
- Many ordinary proteins show templating properties of interest.
- Protein design technology promises custom-made templates in the near future.

There is currently intense interest in using protein scaffolds to prepare uniform nanometre-sized clusters of metals or other inorganic material for use as sensors, imaging agents, drugs, magnetic materials or catalysts. Non-templated chemical synthesis of such clusters often results in a product of variable size and quality, but protein molecules have proved adept at nucleating and stabilizing precise nanoclusters of various kinds. Although much research has focused on natural proteins, such as the iron-storage protein ferritin, recent developments in protein design have allowed entirely novel, symmetrical proteins to be used as templates for the first time.

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