Artificially Engineered Protein Hydrogels Adapted from the Nucleoporin Nsp1 for Selective Biomolecular Transport

Adapting artificially engineered protein polymers from consensus repeats of natural proteins is an attractive approach to mimic the unprecedented performance of natural materials.[1-9] Tough silk-like polypeptides,[1] thermoresponsive elastin-like polypeptides,[3, 6, 9] and resilient and elastic resilin-like polypeptides[5, 7] have been synthesized to mimic the functions of natural materials. Important design principles have been developed for these artificial biopolymers that enable rational control over their thermodynamic, structural, and mechanical properties. The simplified repeat allows for a detailed understanding of sequence-structure-property relationships to be developed,[8] and these tailor-made materials open up opportunities for applications such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, photonic films and smart responsive devices.[1, 3, 4, 10, 11]