Jülich, 19 December 2018 – Protein molecules are nature’s all-rounders and carry out their specific tasks with great efficiency. For example, some play an important role in converting substances; others are involved in combatting pathogens. As a result, these biological machines are important in technical as well as medical applications. However, proteins tend to clump together irreversibly at high concentrations and thus lose their effectiveness, although this only occurs when they are outside their natural environment of the cell’s interior.