A structure that mimics the exquisite light-harvesting machinery of nature has been made from a virus's self-assembling shell. Some photosynthetic bacteria capture and concentrate light's energy in barrel-shaped protein structures, which have light-absorbing molecules known as chromophores stacked around their rim. Matthew Francis and his co-workers at the University of California, Berkeley, copied this design by attaching chromophores to proteins from the coat of the tobacco mosaic virus, which self-assembles into stacks of disks or rods.
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