PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Seokmu Kwon
AU  - Tobias W. Giessen
TI  - Engineered protein nanocages for concurrent RNA and protein packaging <em>in vivo</em>
AID  - 10.1101/2022.06.16.496435
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.06.16.496435
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/16/2022.06.16.496435.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/06/16/2022.06.16.496435.full
AB  - Protein nanocages have emerged as an important engineering platform for biotechnological and biomedical applications. Among naturally occurring protein cages, encapsulin nanocompartments have recently gained prominence due to their favorable physico-chemical properties, ease of shell modification, and highly efficient and selective intrinsic protein packaging capabilities. Here, we expand encapsulin function by designing and characterizing encapsulins for concurrent RNA and protein encapsulation in vivo. Our strategy is based on modifying encapsulin shells with nucleic acid binding peptides without disrupting the native protein packaging mechanism. We show that our engineered encapsulins reliably self-assemble in vivo, are capable of efficient size-selective in vivo RNA packaging, can simultaneously load multiple functional RNAs, and can be used for concurrent in vivo packaging of RNA and protein. Our engineered encapsulation platform has potential for co-delivery of therapeutic RNAs and proteins to elicit synergistic effects, and as a modular tool for other biotechnological applications.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.