Artificial polymers replace natural proteins in biological fluids (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

Artificial polymers replace natural proteins in biological fluids

Caption

Biological fluids are made up of hundreds or thousands of different proteins (represented by space filling models above) that evolved to work together efficiently but flexibly. UC Berkeley polymer scientists are trying to create artificial fluids composed of random heteropolymers (threads inside spheres) with much less complexity, but which mimic many of the properties of the natural proteins (right), such as stabilizing fragile molecular markers.

Credit

Zhiyuan Ruan, Ting Xu lab, UC Berkeley

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