Tomato bushy stunt virus engineering: design, development and tuning of a tool for nanotechnology

The development of a plant derived multifunctional tool for nanobiotechnology based on Tomato bushy stunt virus is the subject of the present PhD thesis. It has been demonstrated the ability of this system to remarkably sustain genetic modifications and in vitro chemical derivatizations of its outer surface, which resulted in the successful display of large chimeric peptides fusions and small chemical molecules, respectively. Moreover, physicochemical conditions for foreign molecules loading and retention in the inner cavity of this nanoparticles system have been defined. Finally, a production and purification strategy from plants has been optimized