NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

"We took a gene from a single-celled organism, Sulfolobus shibatae, which lives in near-boiling acid mud, and changed the gene to add instructions that describe how to make a protein that sticks to gold or semiconductors," said Andrew McMillan, a co-investigator at NASA Ames and primary author of the paper. "What is novel in our work is that we designed this protein so that when it self-assembles into a two-dimensional lattice or template, it also is able to capture metal and semiconductor particles at specific locations on the template surface."