Squid Teeth and Reasons for Repetition

Do squid have teeth? No, but inside the suckers on their tentacles are the next best thing: proteins with tough, crystalline properties. Intrigued by the toughness and flexibility of these "squid ring teeth" (SRTs), scientists at Penn State tried to imitate them.

They programmed bacteria to generate sequences of amino acids similar to the proteins in SRTs. What they discovered and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a story of design imitating design.

Jung et...