Expression and Isolation of a Precious Metal Binding Peptide Useful for Peptide-Directed Nanoparticle Synthesis

The need for low-cost nanoparticle (NP) materials is of great importance within the context of new technologies for catalysis. Processes used today to produce peptide-directed NP morphologies are not scalable in an economical way primarily due to the challenges imposed by the use of a biological molecule. The purpose of this work is to address this challenge thorough the development of a cost effective means of peptide manufacturing.

The poster describes the cloning, fermentation, and isolation of a 45 amino acid long metal binding peptide, accompanied by an assessment of its ability to direct NP synthesis and morphology. A synthetic gene encoding a fusion protein of the metal binding peptide with Green Fluorescent Protein was constructed by overlap extension PCR, introduced into an arabinose inducible vector and transformed into Escherichia coli. High cell density fed batch culture was used to prepare extracts containing the fusion protein, with varying degrees of purity correlated to NP morphology. Finally, NP synthesis was characterized by electron microscopy.