Bacteriophage-Based Self-Propelled Catalytic Biohybrid Nanomotor

Self-propelled biohybrid materials have potential applications in fields from drug delivery to environmental remediation. Microorganisms, such as bacteriophage, provide unparalleled targeting and assembly. Their structure and surface, including exact shape and site-specific functional groups, are genetically encoded and known with atomic scale precision. Synthetic inorganic nanoparticles facilitate superdiffusive motion. Their interactions with chemical fuels or physical fields convert energy into locomotion. Of specific interest, here, are viruses with asymmetric capsid proteins, like the M13 bacteriophage, that can serve as programmable low-symmetry templates for autonomous biohybrid materials. The M13 is a high aspect ratio, 880 nm long and 6.5 nm diameter filamentous virus. It contains approximately 2700 copies of p8 major coat protein along its length and 5 copies of p3 minor coat protein at the proximal end of the filament. Each of these proteins can be modified to promote motor form and function. In this work, the asymmetric structure and functionality of the M13 bacteriophage capsid was used to create nanoswimmers. A cysteine-rich peptide fusion was inserted into the minor coat protein (p3) at the virus tip and Pt nanoparticles were attached via metal-thiol bonding. The viral-based Janus particles were fluorescently tagged and exposed to low concentrations of H₂O₂ to fuel self-propulsion. Using confocal fluorescence microscopy, nanomotor trajectory and motion were evaluated.