Summary and Outlook - Viral Nanoparticles: Tools for Materials Science and Biomedicine - page 244

Chapter

SuMMAry And outlooK

Since the formative studies conducted in the early 1990s, an increasing
number of researchers have become interested in the viral nanotechnology
field. The interdisciplinary nature of the work, sitting at the interface of
virology, chemistry, materials science, and medicine, has facilitated cross-
fertilization of ideas and techniques and led to the development of the
manifold applications of viral nanoparticles (VNPs) discussed in this topic.
A wide variety of chemistries have been developed that facilitated the
functionalization and incorporation of VNPs into devices. VNPs can be
modified using bioconjugation chemistries, as well as mineralization and
metal deposition techniques. VNPs can be arranged into 1D, 2D, and 3D
arrays. As a result of these manipulations, VNPs have been fabricated as
sensors, tracers, catalysts, memory storage devices, photovoltaic devices,
and even battery electrodes. As additional chemistries and VNP platforms
become available, it seems that progress in this area is limited only by the
imagination.
The principles of self-assembly drive innovation in VLP encapsulation
strategies. The self-assembly of VLPs and hybrid systems can be triggered
in vitro

with great flexibility. It is truly remarkable that these viral coat
proteins can be assembled around artificial cores, allowing encapsulation of
various materials

in the natural host only the viral
genome is packaged. Studies to discriminate between material and genome
packaging are likely to illuminate the mechanisms underlying both processes.
Furthermore, an understanding of the self-assembly mechanisms of VNPs
and hybrid VLPs is interesting not only from a materials engineering point of
view, but these experimental approaches also provide supporting data to test
theoretical hypotheses regarding virus structure and assembly. For example,
the assembly of tubular structures using coat proteins that naturally assemble
into icosahedrons allows application of the Caspar-Klug theory, described in
Chapter 2, to non-icosahedral structures.

in vitro , whereas in vivo