The fractal molecule is shaped like a Sierpiński triangle, which consists of smaller triangles that together form a larger triangle. Scientist Franziska Sendker was part of the team that made the accidental discovery. She says: “We discovered this structure completely by accident. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw the first pictures of the molecule.” The molecule is the enzyme ‘citrate synthase’ that is found in the cyanobacteria species Synechococcus elongatus . The researchers discovered that this enzyme has the ability to spontaneously rearrange itself in a fractal pattern. The research has been published in the journal.
Pure coincidence
The discovery of the fractal molecule was therefore entirely coincidental. The big question of this research was therefore how it is possible that this molecule ultimately adopts this special structure. To find this out, the team collaborated with fellow scientist and structural biologist Jan Schuller. He says: “This was one of the more targeted industry database difficult structures that I have had to solve during my career. The biggest problem with determining the precise structure of the fractal molecule was mainly the fact that our image averaging techniques kept getting confused. The reason for this was that the structure consists of smaller triangles, which are part of larger triangles. The algorithm kept focusing on these smaller triangles, thereby ignoring the larger structure.”
Once the structure was mapped, it was time to
Actively search for the reason why this shape occurs. For a first step, the scientists looked at the cyanobacteria themselves. Fellow scientist Georg Hochberg explains why: “It is often the case that enzymes are regulated Iyo Impact yeBranding pane Lead Generation by a process of self-assembly. But during this study, we discovered that the cyanobacteria does not mind that the citrate synthase can rearrange itself into a fractal deb directory molecule.” For this step, the team genetically manipulated several cyanobacteria to ensure that the triangular structure does not appear. None of the cells seemed to suffer from this afterwards. “This made us wonder whether this is not just a coincidence of nature,” Hochberg continues. “Such ‘accidents’ can happen, as long as the structure itself is not too complicated to build.”
