A paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America was published recently by the Percec group and highlighted by E. K. Brockmeier “Cells use sugars to communicate at the molecular level” in Penn Today.

The paper reports by using atomic force microscopy images that were fast fourier-transformed, we found that sugars on the surface of synthetic cells organize themselves automatically into thin lamellar layered and hexagonal patterns. The shapes that the sugar molecules form allows the synthetic cells to be recognized by other cells and also enhances their reactivity with proteins.