February 3, 2009

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MIT researchers who study the structure of protein-based materials to learn the key to their lightweight and robust strength have discovered that the particular arrangement of proteins that produces the sturdiest product is not the arrangement with the most built-in redundancy or the most complicated pattern. Instead, the optimal arrangement of proteins in the rope-like structures they studied is a repeated pattern of two stacks of four bundled alpha-helical proteins.Full Story

Source
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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