Amazing stuff!
"An international team of researchers ... has stumbled upon the first regular molecular fractal in nature. They discovered a microbial enzyme—citrate synthase from a cyanobacterium—that spontaneously assembles into a pattern known as the Sierpinski triangle. Electron microscopy and evolutionary biochemistry studies indicate that this fractal may represent an evolutionary accident. ..."
From the abstract:
"Fractals are patterns that are self-similar across multiple length-scales. Macroscopic fractals are common in nature; however, so far, molecular assembly into fractals is restricted to synthetic systems. Here we report the discovery of a natural protein, citrate synthase from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus, which self-assembles into Sierpiński triangles. Using cryo-electron microscopy, we reveal how the fractal assembles from a hexameric building block. Although different stimuli modulate the formation of fractal complexes and these complexes can regulate the enzymatic activity of citrate synthase in vitro, the fractal may not serve a physiological function in vivo. We use ancestral sequence reconstruction to retrace how the citrate synthase fractal evolved from non-fractal precursors, and the results suggest it may have emerged as a harmless evolutionary accident. Our findings expand the space of possible protein complexes and demonstrate that intricate and regulatable assemblies can evolve in a single substitution."
Discovery of the first fractal molecule in nature (original news release) Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg found for the first time a natural protein that follows a fascinating mathematical pattern of self-similarity
Fig. 2: Levels of fractal assembly.
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