6. Concluding remarks
Integrated concepts from material science, biology, chemistry, and
engineering have developed TMV, BSMV, and their VLPs for the synthesis
of high-quality nanomaterials for diverse applications. TMV and BSMV are
particularly attractive as biotemplates due to their ease of
manipulation, large scale production in bacterial culture, and surface
moieties that facilitate interactions with a number of materials. New
insights afforded by structural biology and spectroscopic
characterization now inform the engineering of CP molecular interactions
within a viral particle/VLP, and between the viral particle/VLP and
deposited nanomaterials. These have led to a number of innovative
genetic strategies that enhance biotemplate structural stability and
improve the uniformity and properties of synthesized nanoscale
structures enabling diverse applications such as sensing, catalysis, and
energy storage. While further engineering is needed to scale up these
systems for widespread industrial nanomaterial synthesis, emerging
technologies from synthetic biology and machine learning promise to
accelerate the pace of TMV- and BSMV- derived biotemplate development in
the years to come.