Chemically controlled protein assembly: techniques and applications.

The study of biological processes has driven the efforts of modern molecular biology to unravel the microscopic capabilities of natural systems. Intrinsic to the experimental analysis of these life-governing principles is the process of testing, replicating, and visualizing the underlying biological mechanisms. As such, interacting with the nanoscale machinery of life becomes an increasingly apparent challenge.1 The range of this pursuit spans from DNA to RNA to proteins. While the controlled assembly of nucleic acid structures is widely studied,2,3 there are a smaller number of studies on the development of methods that investigate and exploit protein assembly and protein-protein interactions.4,5 These ubiquitous natural phenomena form a central founda-