The influence of reaction temperature on biomineralization of ferrihydrite cores in human H-ferritin

Ferritin is not only important for iron storage and detoxification in living organisms, but a multifunctional size-constrained nanoplatform for biomimetic nanoparticles. In order to tailor the biomimetic nanoparticles for future applications, it is essential to investigate the effects of external factors such as temperature on the particle size and structure of reconstituted cores in ferritin. In this study, we systematically investigated the mineral composition, crystallinity, and particle size of human H-ferritin (HuHF) reconstituted at four different temperatures (25, 30, 37, and 42°C) by integrated magnetic and transmission electron microscopy analyses. Our results showed that the particle size of reconstituted ferrihydrite cores (~5 nm) in HuHF was temperature-independent. However, the significant changes of the induced magnetization at 5 T field (M_5T) and remanent magnetization (M_r) at 5 K clearly showed that the crystallinity of reconstituted cores increased with increasing temperature, indicating that the reaction temperature deeply affects the structural order of reconstituted ferrihydrite cores rather than the particle size, and the reconstituted cores become more ordered at higher reaction temperatures. Our findings provide useful insights into biomineralization of ferritin under in vivo fever condition as well as in biomimetic synthesis of nanomaterials using ferritin. Furthermore, the rock magnetic methods should be very useful approaches for characterizing finite ferritin nanoparticles.