Structure of SUPRamolecular assemblies of cyclodextrins resolved by cryo-EM – SUPREM

Nature makes beautiful architectures such as microtubules, fibrils, helical or icosahedral viruses… These shapes precisely engineered by Nature are directly linked to their function. The link between shape and function is the ultimate goal of the SUPREM project, the transfection ability being our focus. To do so we need to be able to access architectures of different shapes with the same general kind of building blocks. However, such assemblies could never be reproduced artificially, until we recently observed one by mixing modified cyclodextrins (CDs) and DNA. Our goal here is first to elucidate the atomic-scale structure and understand the assembly mechanism of such artificial assembly using, for the first time on an artificial system, cryo-EM combined to image analysis. We will endeavour the variation of different parameters of the assembly to try to modulate at will the shape of the assembly. We will then test cell-penetration ability of these assemblies.