Word: proteins
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Fine-tuned by 4 billion years of evolution, protein chemistry has a lot to recommend it. To produce Kevlar, for instance, requires vats of concentrated sulfuric acid that must be maintained at high pressure. But spiders produce silk in the open air using water as a solvent. "I am absolutely fascinated," says University of Washington materials scientist Christopher Viney, "that such an incredible material starts out as a solution in water, and all the spider does is squirt it out through a small hole. In the process, proteins that were soluble turn into insoluble fibers. Now, isn't that amazing...
Biological wizardry of a different sort is responsible for the ruggedness of abalone shells, which under high-powered microscopes resemble elaborately constructed stone walls. In this case, crystals of calcium carbonate, siphoned from seawater, serve as the stones, while a slurry of protein and complex sugars acts as the mortar between them. "The ingredients themselves are not at all impressive," marvels Princeton University materials scientist Ilhan Aksay. "Yet the shell is as strong as the most advanced man-made ceramics." And if a simple stone-and-mortar design can turn an intrinsically chalky substance into a tough coat of armor...
...inkling of what the future may hold comes from Protein Polymer Technologies, a small San Diego firm that is attempting to transform this notion of biomimicry into commercial technology. The company's first product, intended for use in medical research, is a hybrid composed of silkworm protein and fibronectin, a blood protein that promotes cell adhesion. When painted onto plastic sheets, the hybrid provides a high-quality medium for growing cells in the lab. Soon the company hopes to add to its product line other protein-based coatings, including ones that give cheap polyester the luxurious feel of silk...
...promise as coatings and wrappings that increase the body's tolerance of implanted devices. Eventually these substances may be put to work as nearly natural replacements for injured ligaments and arteries. University of Alabama molecular biophysicist Dan Urry, for example, has succeeded in turning a key segment of the protein elastin, present in many body tissues, into a material whose expansive and contractile properties closely approximate those of arterial walls. The material can be fashioned into tubes that feel, uncannily, like real blood vessels and also into sheets for encasing mechanical devices like pacemakers. Tests of this new material...
Fridovich said he anticipates that further experiments with the altered SOD will find the protein less active, and that accumulation of damage to cells caused by superoxides not eliminated by SOD could eventually cause the death of many cells...