Chemistry through the lens

Peptide nanotubes self-assembled into bioinspired 'flowers' by evaporation of diphenylalanine peptide monomer from organic solution. This peptide is the structural repeating unit of the Alzheimer's -amyloid protein (M Reches and E Gazit, Science, 2003, 300, 625). These 'flowers' were grown by P Beker and N Amdursky at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and the image obtained by ESEM (environmental scanning electron microscopy).