Large biomolecules in a small space spontaneously form symmetrical patterns. Researchers from FOM institute AMOLF discovered this together with colleagues from Oxford and Jülich when they confined rod-shaped virus particles in doughnut-shaped micro-chambers. What started as a chance discovery has opened up a whole novel area in the physics of ultrasmall liquid crystal cells with potential applications in novel displays. The results of the research will be published on June 29 2016, in Nature Communications.
Source: phys.org