Au nanocrystals grown on a better-defined one-dimensional tobacco mosaic virus coated protein template genetically modified by a hexahistidine tag.

In this paper, tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) coated protein (CP) was genetically modified by introducing a hexahistidine tag into it for a well-defined one-dimensional template, on which Au nanocrystals (NCs) were grown. The results showed that genetic modification could not only ameliorate the one-dimensional structure of the template, but also improve the growth density of Au NCs on the template. This indicated that genetic modification could be an effective method to modulate the structure of the TMVCP template-based nanocomposites allowing for a broader application of them.