Our NanoNews Digest Sponsors Home > Press > Putting functional proteins in their place: Using DNA-based assembly, scientists developed a method for creating designed and biologically active 2-D and 3-D protein arrays, which show promise for applications in structural biology, biomaterials, nanomedicine, and biocatalysis An illustration showing the approach for assembling biologically functional proteins into ordered 2D and 3D arrays through programmable octahedral-shaped DNA frameworks. These frameworks can host and control the placement of the proteins internally -- for example, at the center (1) or off-center (2) -- and be encoded with specific sequences externally (color coding scheme) to create desired 2-D and 3-D lattices. For example, red only connects to red, blue to blue, and so on. The team demonstrated the preserved biological activity of ferritin lattices by adding a compound (ascorbate) that induced the release of iron irons forming the ferritin core.