Professor Naomi Chayen, from Imperial College London, who led the research, said: "The first step in obtaining a good crystal is to get it to nucleate in an ordered way. The 'holy grail' is to find a 'universal nucleant' which would induce crystallisation of any protein. Although there has been considerable research in search of a universal nucleant, this is the first time we have designed one which works on a large number of materials."
The researchers plan to commercialise this discovery using Imperial Innovations, the College's technology transfer company.