We thank T. Brunette, P. Huang, F. Parmeggiani, Y. Hsia, W. Sheffler, T. Craven, S. Boyken and Z. Chen for suggestions; D. Alonso, L. Goldschmidt and P. Vecchiato for supporting computational resources; B. Legg and J. Tao for AFM support; B. Legg for providing the model of mica (001); L. Carter for size-exclusion chromatography with multi-angle light scattering (SEC-MALS) support. F. Busch and V. H. Wysocki provided native mass spectrometry support (NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences award number P41GM128577). Development of the imaging protocols was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Office through the Materials Synthesis and Simulations Across Scales Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). AFM experiments on the DHR10-micaX and DHR10-micaX-NC were supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Biomolecular Materials Program (BMP) at PNNL. AFM experiments on DHR10-micaX-H formation of hexagonal lattices and analysis of DHR10-micaX binding kinetics were performed at PNNL and supported by the US DOE BES Energy Frontier Research Center CSSAS (The Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales) located at the University of Washington (award number DE-SC0019288). Design and synthesis of DHR10-micaX-H and its variants were performed at the University of Washington and supported by the US DOE BES BMP (award number DE-SC0018940). H.P. was supported by the Institute for Protein Design Materials Science Research Gift Fund and Michelson Medical Research Foundation, Protein Design Initiative Fund, and DOE Biomolecular Materials Program (award number DE-SC0018940). D.B. is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Bruce and Jeannie Nordstrom / Patty and Jimmy Barrier Gift for the Institute for Protein Design Directors Fund. We thank the staff at the Advanced Light Source SIBYLS beamline at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including K. Burnett, G. Hura and J. Tainer for the services provided through the mail-in SAXS programme, which is supported by the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research Integrated Diffraction Analysis program DOE BER IDAT grant (award number DE-AC02-05CH11231) and NIGMS supported ALS-ENABLE (award number GM124169-01). PNNL is a multi-programme national laboratory operated for the Department of Energy by Battelle under contract number DE-AC05-76RL01830.

Reviewer information

Nature thanks Roberto A. Chica, Rajesh R. Naik and Sarah S. Staniland for their contribution to the peer review of this work.