Lose that dusty old Rubik's Cube. Proteins engraved in crystal are the desk accessory du jour at pharma firms from Glaxo to Pfizer. Artist Bathsheba Grossman's first patron was a structural biologist who commissioned a reproduction of ferritin, the molecule that stores the body's excess iron. Since then, her oeuvre has expanded to include replicating DNA, such as that of the Archean bacterium shown here.
To produce the ethereal 3-D etchings, Grossman converts images from the international Protein Data Bank into coordinates that guide a pulsed laser. The tiny microfracture created at the beam's focal point produces a single white line inside a block of lens-grade optical crystal. To carve a complete protein, Grossman makes up to 300,000 cuts, any of which can crack the crystal if clustered too densely. All the effort is worth it. As Grossman says, "Proteins are personal. People get very attached to them."
- Jennifer Kahn
credit: Craig Maxwell
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Designer DNA
