A library of organic landscapes on filamentous phage

A billion-clone library of filamentous phage with different surface structures ('landscapes') was generated by fusing random octapeptides to the N-terminus of all 4000 copies of the major coat protein. Such a 'landscape library' might include clones exhibiting emergent properties that inhere in the entire surface architecture, not in the peptides by themselves. Because the diverse surface landscapes are displayed on viable phage, they can be surveyed for exceedingly rare functions using microbiological selection methods. Clones with several emergent properties of the sort envisioned were successfully selected, suggesting that landscape libraries have promise as a novel source of nanomaterials with exploitable surface properties.