Self-Assembling Protein Nets

May 26, 2014

(Phys.org) – A solution to this challenge can be provided by synthetic biology approaches that are becoming essential for a variety of applications, in particular for modern medicine where novel biomolecular devices that control biology in the way as nature are in steady demand. In response to this, a research team from NPL has engineered an artificial protein of about 3 nm in size, which spontaneously self-knits in water into intricate sub-millimetre nets from the molecule up.