Scientists at the University of Texas have come up with clever new way to build microscopic structures ? using laser beams to carve shapes from interlocking protein molecules.
And they've built some impressive micro-sculptures using the trick, including a silhouette of a house fly and their home state of Texas (shown to the left), as well as some impressive three dimensional chambers
that can trap a single bacterial cell.
The fabrication process - known as "multiphoton lithography
" - is pretty simple. Just print out the negative of an image on transparent paper using a standard desktop printer, then place the image in front of a laser beam and focus it on liquid protein with a microscope.
The laser causes the protein molecules to cross-link and form into a solid structure. And refocusing the microscope at different levels provides a way to build 3D structures.
The protein shapes can be fabricated in just minutes and the researchers plan to eventually use the technique to create three dimensional replicas of real biological materials. They?re starting with an extra-cellular matrix that could be used to grow neurons.
That?s great, but what about some protein-fabricated art to hang on the wall? I guess that would be too sticky.Aria Pearson ? New Scientist intern, San Francisco
(Images courtesy of J. B. Shear and B. Kaehr)