초록 |
Microtubules are tubular cytoskeletons with a 15 nm inner diameter, which are formed by the polymerization of tubulins. Although microtubule-based nanomaterials have been developed by functionalization of their outer surface, the inside of microtubules has not been used because of no methodology. The encapsulation of nanostructures will be a new concept to functionalize microtubules. Herein, we developed a methodology to encapsulate various molecules inside microtubules. Firstly, we constructed a Tau-derived peptide (TP) which binds to a pocket inside microtubules (Chem. Eur. J., 2018). By conjugating TP, green fluorescent protein (GFP) (Chem. Commun., 2019) and magnetic nanoparticles (Nano Lett., 2020) were successfully encapsulated inside microtubules. Also, we showed the binding of TP to the microtubules in living cells (ACS Omega, 2019). These results indicate that the peptide-based encapsulation is a promising approach to construct new microtubule-based materials. |