Multivalent Protein Assembly Using Monovalent Self-Assembling Building Blocks

Discotic molecules, which self-assemble in water into columnar supramolecular polymers, emerged as an alternative platform for the organization of proteins. Here, a monovalent discotic decorated with one single biotin was synthesized to study the self-assembling multivalency of this system in regard to streptavidin. Next to tetravalent streptavidin, monovalent streptavidin was used to study the protein assembly along the supramolecular polymer in detail without the interference of cross-linking. Upon self-assembly of the monovalent biotinylated discotics, multivalent proteins can be assembled along the supramolecular polymer. The concentration of discotics, which influences the length of the final polymers at the same time dictates the amount of assembled proteins.