De Novo Design of Protein Cages to Accommodate Metal Cofactors

The chapter, by reviewing the papers appeared in the literature in the last 10 years, illustrates the different strategies used for the development of de novo-designed protein cages housing mononuclear and dinuclear metal-binding sites, as well as hemes and metalloporphyrins. We mainly focus on ?-helical coiled-coil and bundle structures, which self- assemble with the metal cofactors. Fewer examples of artificial metalloproteins based on ?-sheet structures have appeared in the literature and they are also described here.