The leaf-shaped nanomaterial, which is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, is made from synthetic
We can turn it from a leaf to a test tube and back again simply by changing the pH or concentration of acid in the environment.
Name: Vincent Conticello, Senior Author of the Discovery and ProfessorEmory's Biomolecular Chemistry
Collagen protein consists of a triple helix of fibers that twine around each other like a three-strand rope. The strands are not flexible, they are tough like pencils, and fold tightly into a crystalline array.
A leaf is one large two-dimensional crystal, but because of the format of the peptide packaging, it looks like a bunch of pencils.Half of the pencils in the pack have their ends pointing upwards, while the other half have the opposite ends.
Conticello wanted to refine the collagen sheets so that each side would be limited to one function.Similar to pencils, there will be all the tips on one surface of the sheet and erasers on the other .
So the researchers were able to tune the sheets to change shape at specific pH levels, in a way that could be manipulated at the molecular level by design.
Such properties can be used, for example, in medicine, where the patient needs to load a therapeutic agent into a collagen tube, and then the tube can be disconnected into molecules that contain the drug.
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