Engineering self-assembling nano-bioarchitectures

Supramolecular protein complexes, such as viral capsids and bacterial microcompartments, are widely diffused in nature. These systems are capable of spontaneous self-assembly and organization into complex 3D bioarchitectures, starting from simple protein units, optimized by natural evolution. Protein-based nanomaterials have recently gained significant attention in nanotechnology due to their versatility and biocompatibility. These engineered nano-structures exhibit unique features and are easily functionalized, making them ideal candidates for various applications such as drug delivery, catalysis, and imaging.This thesis explores the development of a novel nano-bioarchitecture serving as a molecular scaffold for biocatalysts, and featuring tailored properties for this specific application. We illustrate the design of the structure, in particular discussing the cage subunits and the interactions mediating the self-assembly into the biostructure. Both a chemically crosslinked nano-bioarchitecture and a biomimetic, protein-protein interactions-mediated only system are extensively studied and characterized, to yield the final system. Also, investigations on the scaffolding properties of the nano-biostructure using a simple model cargo protein are reported. Overall, this work contributes to the advancement of protein-based nanomaterials by elucidating design principles and assembly strategies for synthetic protein cages tailored for specific applications in nanotechnology and biocatalysis.