Communication
ChemComm
irradiating with VIS light and UV light, which provided a new
strategy for the design of intelligent protein-based nanobiomaterials.
We thank Prof. Oded Shoseyov from the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem for his kind supply of the SP1 gene. This work was
also supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 21234004, 21420102007, 21574056, and 91527302)
and the Chang Jiang Scholars Program of China.
Fig. 5 (a) UV-Vis spectra of AzoPD4/SP1 nanowires. (b) Reversible change
between the straight and curved states of the protein nanowires.
Notes and references
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UV-vis spectroscopy was employed to monitor the reversibility
of the photocontrolled interconversion of the protein nano-
wires. As shown in Fig. 5, AzoPD4/SP1 could also be isomerized
to the cis-form upon UV light irradiation for 10 min. After being
further exposed to VIS light for another 10 min, the absorbance
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Also, the percentage of curved nanowires could recover from the
initial 80% to above 65% after alternative irradiation with VIS
light and UV light. We presented a straightforward and previously
unused method for the construction of protein nanowires that
could reversibly interconvert between disparate straight and
curved nanowires triggered by noninvasive light. If supplemented
with a synergic interaction to cooperate with the multiple electro-
static interactions to accurately control the deflecting direction,
we would have reason to believe that a photocontrollable inter-
convertible protein nanostructure which could interconvert between
nanowires and nanorings or nanospirals could be designed, which
is meaningful for the construction of function-controllable protein
nanostructures.
In summary, photocontrolled protein nanowires with rever-
sible morphology were developed through photoisomerizable
azobenzene-cored dendrimer evoked protein self-assembly.
AzoPD4 could manipulate SP1 into a parallel arrangement to
form straight nanowires. However, when isomerized to the cis-
form under UV light, cis-AzoPD4 could manipulate SP1 obliquely
into arranging to afford protein nanoarcs and the average angle
of the adjacent SP1 rings was nearly 10.51 Æ 0.51. Each nanoarc
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with an inner curvature value up to 0.040 nmÀ1. The curvature
of the protein nanowires could be switched by alternatively
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