Abstract
In Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) the probe is a nanometric tip located at the end of a microcantilever which palpates the specimen under study as a blind person uses a white cane. In this way AFM allows obtaining nanometric resolution images of individual protein shells, such as viruses, in liquid milieu. Beyond imaging, AFM also enables the manipulation of single protein cages, and the characterization a variety physicochemical properties able of inducing any measurable mechanical perturbation to the microcantilever that holds the tip. In this chapter we start revising some recipes for adsorbing protein shells on surfaces. Then we describe several AFM approaches to study individual protein cages, ranging from imaging to spectroscopic methodologies devoted to extracting physical information, such as mechanical and electrostatic properties.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge to our collaborators and projects FIS2014-59562-R, FIS2015-71108-REDT, Fundación BBVA and “María de Maeztu” Program for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2014-0377).
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Martín-González, N., Ortega-Esteban, A., Moreno-Madrid, F., Llauró, A., Hernando-Pérez, M., de Pablo, P.J. (2018). Atomic Force Microscopy of Protein Shells: Virus Capsids and Beyond. In: Peterman, E. (eds) Single Molecule Analysis. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1665. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7271-5_15
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