University of California, Santa Barbara researchers are learning how to harness the biomolecular mechanism that directs the nanofabrication of silica in living organisms.

“This is to learn to direct the synthesis of photovoltaic and semiconductor nanocrystals of titanium dioxide, gallium oxide and other semiconductors — materials with which nature has never built structures before,” said Dan Morse, who directs the new Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies at UCSB.

Morse and his students have made advances in copying the way marine sponges construct skeletal glass needles at the nanoscale. The research group is using nature’s example to produce semiconductors and photovoltaic materials.

The research group discovered that the center of the sponge’s fine glass needles contains a filament of protein that controls the synthesis of the needles. By cloning and sequencing the DNA of the gene that codes for this protein, they discovered that the protein is an enzyme that acts as a catalyst and this enzyme actively promotes the formation of the glass while simultaneously serving as a template to guide the shape of the growing mineral (glass) that it produces.

These discoveries are significant because they represent an environment-friendly, low temperature, biotechnological, catalytic route to the nanostructural fabrication of valuable materials.

University of California – Santa Barbara press release