Word: keratin
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Growing hair, for example, is a trait that evolved only in mammals. One of the key proteins in our hair is known as alpha-keratin. Not long ago, some Austrian and Italian researchers decided to search for alpha-keratin genes in animals that lack hair. They found those genes in chickens and lizards - which belong to the closest living lineages to mammals. Lizards build alpha-keratin in their claws. And it turns out that mammals do as well. The research suggests that the hairless ancestors of today's mammals already had alpha-keratin that was used to build their claws...
...colds and cancer. But at mid-century he was the world's premier physical chemist, the man who had literally written the book on chemical bonds. A few months before Watson arrived, in fact, Pauling embarrassed the Cavendish by winning the race to figure out the structure of keratin, the protein that makes up hair and fingernails. (It was a long, complex corkscrew of atoms known as the alpha-helix.) While he did rely on X-ray crystallographs for hints to what was going on at the molecular level, Pauling depended more heavily on scaled-up models he built...
APRIL Linus Pauling deciphers the molecular structure of the protein keratin...
...Western diamondback, Crotalus (castanet) atrox (fearful), is indeed a horrible-wonderful creature. Its head is broad and flat, and its close-set, silver gray eyes with black pupils seem fixed and furious. A dry, cool skin of interlocking gray-and-brown diamond pattern leads to a pyramid of hard keratin nubs, acquired at the tail after successive moltings. The ceaseless, disturbed rattling of so many snakes together is like the sound of bacon frying in a hundred skillets...
Rhino horn is not actually horn but densely compacted fibers of keratin, a protein found in hair and fingernails. Importing it is illegal in most countries, but an illicit $3 million-a-year trade flourishes in the Middle East and eastern Asia, where dealers pay $450 per lb. wholesale for the stuff. (One large animal can yield 10 lbs. of horn.) It is a myth that the horn is used as an aphrodisiac. In the Far East it is ground into traditional medicines that supposedly reduce fever and stop nosebleeds. It is also coveted in North Yemen, where...