A Synthetic Molecular Cage enables Protein Refolding

摘要

Spacial isolation of molecules is often a key strategy to regulate its molecular behavior. Biological systems well employ such mechanism; however, scientists have yet utilized it as skillfully as nature, particularly for macromolecular substrates. The main reason comes from the synthetic difficulty of molecular architectures large enough to confine macromolecules like proteins. Our group owns a self-assembly technology to synthesize hollow metal complexes.1 This family of self-assembled chemical cages contains the example of the largest known artificially self-assembled object that has a precise atomic composition.2 This cage is 8.2 nm in diameter, and in principle, can be further expanded in size.3 To the best of our knowledge, our MnL2n family is the first class of synthetic assemblies that are capable of encapsulating whole protein molecules.4