The relief “Adoration of the Shepherds” by the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Torretti is disfigured by lumpy salt crystals. Now, a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart has established that the calcium acetate hemihydrate that makes up these efflorescences bears a similar structure to the protein collagen. The structural characteristics not only help prevent damage of this kind, but have also provided the researchers with interesting new ideas for bioinorganic chemistry.
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Source: Phys.org