Team:IISc-Bangalore

Gas vesicles (GVs) are hollow protein nanostructures synthesized by phototrophic haloarchaea and cyanobacteria to regulate their flotation in aquatic habitats.
Bioengineered GVs have been genetically modified for diverse purposes; ultrasonic molecular imaging, gauging cellular turgor pressures, and vaccine delivery - but none of their current applications exploits their most fundamental characteristic: buoyancy.
Our modelling indicates that clusters of GVs float several orders of magnitude better than individual GVs, as buoyancy scales with volume while Stokes’ drag scales with effective radius.
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