Virus Extrusion

If you haven't read the article on Angela Belcher's work at MIT, please read it here. Since I know a lot of attention is being paid to photonic textiles these days, this technology could be especially useful. The basic idea is this: quantum dots are functionalized to attach themselves to virus strands at strategic locations and the mixture is extruded into solution (very similar to wet spinning). Quantum dots can do several cool things (see below) - but that's not the point. The point is that these guys have enabled self-assembly on the molecular level that exceeds what can currently be done through polymerization.

The resulting fiber is analogous in tensile strength to nylon which means that it could be possibly spun and woven/knitted.

The applications listed in the write-up are the usual suspects or fiber batteries and solar cells, but there is so much more that could be done. Scalability will certainly be an interesting challenge. What are some other functional components that could be used with the virus assembly method?