Figure 3

Design strategies for symmetric domain-based intermolecular protein assemblies. (a) Fusion of natural oligomerizing protein domains. Two different oligomeric protein domains (dimerization domain (pink), trimerization domain (blue)) are genetically fused via helical linker (violet) to obtain a single chain building block which self-assembled into a 12-subunit cage-like structure with tetrahedral shape (4d9j) [56]. (b) Novel protein domain interface design. Computational design of additional interaction surfaces (red) on natural trimerization domain (blue) leads to the formation of 12-subunit assembly with tetrahedral - or 24-subunit assembly with octahedral symmetry (4ddf) [62].