Surface Modification of Tobacco Mosaic Virus with “Click” Chemistry

Cu-catalyzed azide-alkyne 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction, renascent of the well-known Huisgen reaction, has recently flourished with applications in organic synthesis, drug discovery, polymer and materials science, and biotechnology. The high reaction yield, simple reaction and purification conditions, wide range of solvent and pH stabilities, and functional group tolerance make the CuAAC reaction a prototypical “click chemistry”, ideal for incorporating functionalities onto desired scaffolds. Over the years it has been widely employed to construct and functionalize polymeric and polyvalent display systems, including polymers, dendrimers, nanoparticles, and surfaces, where an extremely high reaction efficiency for every unit reaction is desirable. In particular, as organic azides and alkynes are almost unreactive with biomolecules and water, CuAAC reactions have been employed in derivatizing biomacromolecules, viruses, and cells with high efficacy under mild reaction conditions. Recently tyrosine residues have been considered as a particularly attractive target for chemoselective modification of proteins because of its subabundant distribution. Francis and coworkers have reported a number of transformations, ranging from the Mannich-type reaction to a transition metal mediated allylation reaction to a diazonium-coupling reaction, which can efficiently target the phenolic group of tyrosine residues at physiological conditions. To overcome the sluggish reactivity with electron-enriched diazonium salts, a sequential reduction/oxidation/Diels–Alder reaction was developed to break the limitation of functionalities being incorporated. In this communication, we report that CuAAC reactions can be combined with a diazonium-coupling reaction to quantitatively functionalize tyrosine residues with a wide array of starting materials. Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) is a classic example of rodlike plant viruses consisting of 2130 identical protein subunits arranged helically around genomic single RNA strand. The length of TMV, that is, 300 nm, is defined by the encapsulated genomic RNA that stabilizes the coat protein assembly. The polar outer and inner surfaces of TMV have been exploited as templates to grow metal or metal oxide nanowires, and conductive polymers have been coated on 1D assembled TMV to produce conductive nanowires. TMV based materials have recently shown great potential with applications in nanoelectronics and energy harvesting devices. In addition, it has been reported that tyrosine residues (Y139) of TMV are viable for chemical ligation using the electrophilic substitution reaction at the ortho position of the phenol ring with diazonium salts. This reaction is very efficient, yet has two distinct disadvantages for broader applications. First, it is difficult to synthesize desired starting materials; and second, the reaction is not compatible with acid-labile functional groups and suitable for electron-deficient anilines only. To embrace the structural diversity of various starting materials, TMV offers an ideal polyvalent display system which allows us to test the efficiency of CuAAC reaction in combining with the tyrosine ligation reaction. As shown in Scheme 1, TMV was first treated with the diazonium salt generated from 3-ethynylaniline 1 in situ adapted from the protocol reported by Francis and co-workers. MALDI-TOF MS analysis indicated that >95% of the capsid monomers were converted into alkyne derivatives 2 (Figure 1) despite the absence of a strong electron withdrawing group in the diazonium reagent. Encouraged by this result, the CuAAC reactions between 2 and azides were explored. For bioconjugation reactions using CuAAC, the Cu catalysts are either generated directly by addition of Cu salts, or in situ from soluble Cu sources and a reducing agent, such as a copper wire, phosphines, thiols, or ascorbate. Multidentate heterocyclic ligands are often required for enhancing the reaction efficiency. Upon screening a series of reaction conditions, we found that the combination of CuSO4/sodium ascorbate (NaAsc) gave the best results. Whereas it is destructive to most other protein complex systems, ascorbate is evidently benign to TMV and has no impact on its structural integrity. 3-Azido-7-hydroxy-coumarin a was first employed as the ACHTUNGTRENNUNGazido counterpart in the reaction, which could be easily monitored by UV-visible absorption at 340 nm (Figure 1B). As a general protocol, 2 (2 mgmL ) and a (3 mm) were added to a solution of CuSO4 (1 mm) and NaAsc (2 mm) in Tris buffer (10 mm, pH 7.8) with 20% DMSO (used to increase the solubility of the azide component). After incubation for 18 h at room temperature, the viral particles were separated from the small molecules by sucrose gradient sedimentation. The integrity of TMV was confirmed by TEM and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) analysis (data not shown). A strong absorption at 340 nm indicated the successful attachment of coumarin motifs (Figure 1B). MALDI-TOF MS analysis indicated a near quantitative transformation of surface alkynes to triazoles as shown in Figure 1A. [a] M. A. Bruckman, G. Kaur, L. A. Lee, F. Xie, J. Sepulveda, Dr. Q. Wang Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Nanocenter University of South Carolina 631 Sumter Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208 (USA) Fax: (+1)803-777-9521 E-mail : wang@mail.chem.sc.edu [b] R. Breitenkamp, X. Zhang, M. Joralemon, Dr. T. P. Russell, Dr. T. Emrick Polymer Science and Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts Conte Center for Polymer Research, Massachusetts 01003 (USA)