Evolution of Protein Assemblies Driven by the Switching of Interplay Mode

A protein assembly with the ability to switch interplay modes of multiple driving forces has been achieved. Although biomolecular systems driven by multiple driving forces have been exploited, work on such a protein assembly capable of switching the interplay modes at nanoscale has been rarely reported so far as a result of their great fabrication challenge. In this work, two sets of driving forces such as ligand-ligand interaction and protein-protein interaction were leveraged to antagonistically underpin the multilayered stackings and trigger the hollow evolution to afford the well-defined hollow rectangular frame of proteins. While these protein frames further collapsed into aggregates, the ligand-ligand interactions were weakened, and the interplay of two sets of driving forces thereby tended to switch into synergistic mode, converting the protein packing mode from porously loose packing to axially dense packing and thus giving rise to a morphological evolution toward a nanosized protein tube. This strategy not only provides a nanoscale understanding on the mechanism underlying the switch of interplay modes in the context of biomacromolecules but also may provide access for diverse sophisticated biomacromolecular nanostructures that are historically inaccessible for conventional self-assembly strategies.