{"id":242691,"date":"2026-08-14T01:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T06:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/protein-like-nanoparticles-sort-themselves-inside-growing-crystals-enabling-controlled-release"},"modified":"2026-08-14T01:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T06:24:17","slug":"protein-like-nanoparticles-sort-themselves-inside-growing-crystals-enabling-controlled-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/protein-like-nanoparticles-sort-themselves-inside-growing-crystals-enabling-controlled-release","title":{"rendered":"Protein-like nanoparticles sort themselves inside growing crystals, enabling controlled release"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/protein-like-nanoparticles-sort-themselves-inside-growing-crystals-enabling-controlled-release2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The tiny bones in your fingers withstand countless taps and swipes thanks to a precise blend of materials. Flexible collagen fibers form the framework, reinforced by hard calcium phosphate hydroxyapatite crystals. This is just one of countless examples in which living organisms weave organic materials directly into inorganic crystals with exquisite precision. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-75685-3\" target=\"_blank\">a recent study<\/a> published in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, scientists attempted to recreate such precise spatial arrangements in biomimetic composite materials.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers made two types of tiny diblock copolymer nanoparticles designed to mimic pseudo-proteins. The first consisted of solid spheres about 100 nanometers big, with a poly(benzyl methacrylate) core and a shell of sulfate-containing chains tagged with a red fluorescent dye. The second consisted of hollow, bubble-like particles about 300 nanometers across. They had the same polymer core but a carboxylate-rich outer shell tagged with a green fluorescent dye.<\/p>\n<p>These tiny polymer nanoparticles, engineered with different sizes and compositions, much like protein molecules, sorted themselves naturally as growing calcite crystals trapped them. Instead of mixing randomly, the two types ended up in separate regions of the crystal, creating an artificial biomineral with a distinctly organized structure\u2014all driven by differences in the nanoparticles\u2019 surface chemistry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny bones in your fingers withstand countless taps and swipes thanks to a precise blend of materials. Flexible collagen fibers form the framework, reinforced by hard calcium phosphate hydroxyapatite crystals. This is just one of countless examples in which living organisms weave organic materials directly into inorganic crystals with exquisite precision. In a recent [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3,19,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}