Self-assembly of tomato bushy stunt viruses on silicon under the influence of the drop shape, drop volume and the virus concentration

Self-assembled plant viruses, here tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV), are interesting building blocks in nanobiotechnology. Especially genetically modified virus types show enhanced self-assembling properties compared to the wild type (wt) virus. In this article important aspects of the self-assembly of tetra histidine (4xHis) TBSV (histidine side chains on the capsid surface) are presented in detail. Different virus concentrations show a different wetting behavior of the solid substrate. This leads to different coverages depending on the position within the sample. In the center of the virus covered area, the most stable conditions are found and often also the highest coverage. If these central areas are compared to samples prepared with different virus concentrations, a large variation of the coverage can be detected. For the desired homogeneous monolayer of the virus, the concentration has thus to be optimized. In addition, it could be shown that the drop volume does not influence the homogeneity of the surface coverage. (© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)