Paper Science, Core Structures

From The Popular Edge, a pop-up books art site, comes an interesting look at Matt Schlian and his paper engineering project with the University of Michigan as they look at protein mis-folding of Alzheimer’s disease which Schlian works into paper models. Beautiful paper scuptures from a terrible disease.

"The root cause of Alzheimer’s disease is protein mis-folding. The modular arrangements in which protein strands are formed, break down and incorrectly fold. This causes a chain reaction of erroneous folding. My approach to understanding this is hands on; the microscopic folds can be mapped on a human scale out of paper and used as a basis for sculpture."