Protein design is a technique that is increasingly valuable to a variety of fields, from biochemistry, to therapeutics, to materials engineering. University of Pennsylvania chemists have taken this kind of design a step further; using computational methods, they have created the first custom-designed protein crystal.
Picking an ambitious design target with challenging features, the researchers' success bodes well for the technique's use in better understanding proteins' makeup or using their self-assembling properties in making new materials with unique properties.
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