De Novo Design of Xeno-Metallo Coiled Coils

Bioinorganic chemists aspire to achieve the same exquisite and highly controlled inorganic chemistry featured in biology. An exciting mimetic approach involves the use of miniature artificial protein scaffolds designed de novo (often based on the coiled coil (CC) scaffold), for reproducing native metal ion sites and their function. Recently, there is increased interest, instead, in the design of xeno-metal sites within CC assemblies. This involves incorporating either non-biological metal ions, cofactors or non-proteinogenic amino acid ligands for metal ion coordination, whilst retaining a minimal CC protein scaffold. Using this approach, one should be able to create functional designs with unique and unusual properties, which combine the advantages of both biology and ‘traditional’ non-biological inorganic chemistry. It is the recent progress with respect to the design of xeno-metallo CCs which will be discussed in this Focus Review.