Remotely Activated Protein-Producing Nanoparticles

Avi Schroeder†‡, Michael S. Goldberg†, ChristianKastrup†‡§, Yingxia Wang‡, Shan Jiang†‡, Brian J.Joseph‡, Christopher G. Levins†‡, Sneha T. Kannan†,Robert Langer†‡, and Daniel G. Anderson*†‡

^†David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and ^‡Department of Chemical Engineering,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States

^§ Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4 Canada

 Harvard MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States

Nano Lett., 2012, 12 (6), pp 2685–2689

DOI: 10.1021/nl2036047

Publication Date (Web): March 20, 2012

Copyright © 2012 American Chemical Society

The development of responsive nanomaterials, nanoscale systems that actively respond to stimuli, is one general goal of nanotechnology. Here we develop nanoparticles that can be controllably triggered to synthesize proteins. The nanoparticles consist of lipid vesicles filled with the cellular machinery responsible for transcription and translation, including amino acids, ribosomes, and DNA caged with a photolabile protecting group. These particles served as nanofactories capable of producing proteins including green fluorescent protein (GFP) and enzymatically active luciferase. In vitro and in vivo, protein synthesis was spatially and temporally controllable, and could be initiated by irradiating micrometer-scale regions on the time scale of milliseconds. The ability to control protein synthesis inside nanomaterials may enable new strategies to facilitate the study of orthogonal proteins in a confined environment and for remotely activated drug delivery.