Nanotechnologists with a creative streak have turned proteins into origami, folding the biomolecules into relatively complex 3D objects such as a triangular pyramid or tetrahedron. The advance could offer researchers a new way to craft useful nanoscale objects for a variety of functions, such as delivering drugs and making novel catalysts capable of carrying out specific chemical reactions in sequence, much the way organisms do to create the myriad compounds that they rely on.
Designing nano-sized objects from biomolecules hasn't been easy. Previously, researchers had worked mostly with DNA, and it took them more than 3 decades to go from linking a few strands of DNA together into simple triangles and squares to constructing more complex 3D pyramids and cubes. In 2006, scientists in California came up with a major breakthrough when they invented a technique called DNA origami, in which they designed a long strand of DNA to fold back and forth upon itself, eventually assembling into virtually any shape they designed into the DNA from the start, such as a smiley face or sphere.
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