Hydrophobins: Multifunctional Biosurfactants for Interface Engineering

Overview

Journal J Biol Eng

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Biomedical Engineering

Date 2019 Jan 26

PMID 30679947

Citations 21

Authors

Bryan W Berger

Nathanael D Sallada

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Hydrophobins are highly surface-active proteins that have versatile potential as agents for interface engineering. Due to the large and growing number of unique hydrophobin sequences identified, there is growing potential to engineer variants for particular applications using protein engineering and other approaches. Recent applications and advancements in hydrophobin technologies and production strategies are reviewed. The application space of hydrophobins is large and growing, including hydrophobic drug solubilization and delivery, protein purification tags, tools for protein and cell immobilization, antimicrobial coatings, biosensors, biomineralization templates and emulsifying agents. While there is significant promise for their use in a wide range of applications, developing new production strategies is a key need to improve on low recombinant yields to enable their use in broader applications; further optimization of expression systems and yields remains a challenge in order to use designed hydrophobin in commercial applications.

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