The design and production of future materials would enormously benefit if we were capable of self-assembling nanostructures with the precision and reliability found in biological self-assembly, and considerable efforts are thus made to better understand these processes. Currently there seems to exist a consensus that a successful model for the formation of biological nanostructure such as microtubules or tubular viruses through self-assembly requires a monomer geometry that already has a preferred curvature explicitly built in. In a recent article in Nature Communications researchers from the division of physical chemistry at Lund University together with colleagues from the University of Konstanz and the ETH Zurich now challenge this view. They show that simple ellipsoidal colloids can form well-defined tubular structures in the presence of an alternating electric field (Fig. 1). Supported by computer simulations, their experimental findings demonstrate the existence of a new and simpler path than previously expected towards to fabricate of regular tubular virus-like structures.