Fabrication of functional metal nanocomposites by using protein and its self-assemblies as template has aroused the interest of the researchers. Protein and its self-assemblies generally exhibit various morphological structures and possess specific molecular-recognition as well as biomimetic mineralization capabilities. These characteristics make them could play an important role of structural orientation and morphology control during the assisted synthesis of metal nanostructures. And the fabricated protein-metal nanostructures composites exhibit broad prospect of applications in catalytic conversion

biosensing

medical imaging and so on. Based on the differences in structural characteristics of proteins and their assemblies

this review summarizes the recent progress in the construction of metal nanocomposites based on protein single subunits

protein multi-subunit super assembled structures and three-dimensional protein crystals. The direction of research and development is forecasted. Furthermore

the future research direction in this field is prospected.