News in Brief

Professor Markus Buehler and Ph.D. student Sinan Keten reveal that the strength of a biological material like spider silk lies in the geometric configuration of structural proteins, which have small clusters of weak hydrogen bonds that work cooperatively to resist force and dissipate energy. This structure makes protein-based materials as strong as steel, even though the hydrogen bonds that hold them together are 100 to 1,000 times weaker than the metallic bonds in steel. Read news release.