Methods for the generation of nanoparticles encapsulated within cage proteins, such as ferritins, provide particles with low polydispersities due to size constraint by the cage. The proteins can provide enhanced water solubility to enable biological applications and affinity and identification tags to facilitate delivery or the assembly of advanced materials. Many effective methods have been developed, however, they are often impeded by cage protein instability in the presence of reagents or conditions for formation of the nanoparticles. Although the stability of ferritin cage quaternary structure can be enhanced, application of ferritins to materials science remains limited by unpredictable behaviour. Recently, we reported a medium throughput technique to directly detect the ferritin cage state. Herein, we expand this strategy to screen conditions commonly used for the formation of gold nanoparticles. Not only do we report nanoparticle formation conditions that permit ferritin stability, we establish a general screening strategy based on protein cage stability that could be applied to other protein cages or for the generation of other types of particles.

由于笼子的尺寸限制，用于产生包封在笼子蛋白（例如铁蛋白）中的纳米颗粒的方法提供了具有低多分散性的颗粒。这些蛋白质可以提供增强的水溶性，从而能够进行生物学应用，并具有亲和力和识别标签，以利于先进材料的递送或组装。已经开发出许多有效的方法，但是，它们在存在试剂或形成纳米颗粒的条件下经常被笼子蛋白的不稳定性所阻碍。尽管可以增强铁蛋白笼的四级结构的稳定性，但铁蛋白在材料科学中的应用仍然受到不可预测的行为的限制。最近，我们报道了一种中等通量技术，可以直接检测铁蛋白笼状态。在此处，我们将这一策略扩展到筛选通常用于金纳米颗粒形成的条件。我们不仅报告了允许铁蛋白稳定的纳米颗粒形成条件，而且基于蛋白质笼的稳定性建立了一种通用的筛选策略，该策略可应用于其他蛋白质笼或用于生成其他类型的颗粒。