We want to talk about bionanoparticles, which have the unique properties of being self-assembling and multifunctional. In particular, protein cages like those found in plant viruses and ferritin, in addition to other clearly defined self-assembling structural motifs of proteins, are useful building blocks with a lot of potential in (bio) nanotechnology. Biomedicine, diagnostics and analytics, and nanoelectronics are just a few of the fields in which promising results and applications are being presented by a growing number of research projects. Bionanoparticles for hybrid and soft protein–polymer composite materials, on the other hand, have not yet received a lot of attention. The structure of a few selected plant viruses and ferritin will be used as an example to illustrate the structural principles of clearly defined protein complexes in the beginning of the article. The use of modified bionanoparticles in the production of novel nanostructured (hybrid) materials and recent advances in chemical or genetically programmed functionalization will then be discussed. Additionally, an up-to-date overview of grafting-onto and grafting-from polymerization strategies for protein and protein complex modification will be provided. The article comes to a close with some fascinating examples of how bio (in-) organic nanoparticles are used in biomedical applications, catalysis, and analytics.
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