New MIT technology promises to speed up the accurate sorting of proteins, work that may ultimately aid in the detection and treatment of disease.
This scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image shows MIT's new nanoscale molecular sieve, which consists of thousands of alternating deep (300 nanometers or billionths of a meter) and shallow (55 nanometers) regions. The deep and shallow regions act together to form energy barriers that separate proteins by size. Pores of different sizes can be engineered for different filters to capture specific proteins. Image courtesy / Han lab