Reading Room / fibres
Growing molecular reads
Fibres, the property made in the pull.
A long molecule only becomes a thread while it is being drawn. Which is why having the protein can feel like having the material, and isn't.
MATTER
04/07
start here
Fibres, from the molecule up
Spidroins, with hard patches sitting inside a soft matrix. And the narrowing duct the spider pulls the liquid through, which does as much of the work as the sequence does.
Foundational · Molecular · Framework
The rest of the shelf
02
Spider silk, down to the spidroin
Small β-sheet nanocrystals held in a springy matrix. The hard part stabilises, the soft part gives, and toughness is what the two do together.
MOLECULAR · structure
03
The marble berry and its stack
The brightest colour known in a living thing, with no pigment anywhere in it. Cellulose layers twisted at a spacing that hands blue back, at about 30% reflectivity.
MOLECULAR · colour
04
Brewed the protein, still short of the thread
You can brew spidroin without a spider, and people do. The fibre still comes out weaker, because the drawing and the lining-up is the half nobody has finished.
MOLECULAR · fabrication
Molecules Covered
phycocyanin
phycocyanobilin
RuBisCO
Glossary
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