Serendipitous Splendor
Credit: Dylan Snider
Chemistry Ph.D. candidate Dylan Snider is working on a way to make cancer therapeutics by forcing peptides to form into small nanofibers around cancer cells by using DNA nanotechnology. While investigating how the peptides reacted without the DNA, he let one of his scanning electron microscope samples dry and found something unexpected on the edge of the sample plate. A large conglomeration of the amino acid chains had condensed into a massive, ethereal, tendril-like structure that could easily be envisioned roaming about on an alien world or in the depths of our own oceans.