The chemical industry can learn a lot from the common mussel. Not only are the mollusc's mother of pearl and tough threads with which it clings to the seafloor remarkable, but the way in which these ...

Byssus, or sea silk, is one of the most coveted materials in the world – but after more than 1,000 years in the same matrilineal family tree, this ancient thread may soon unravel. Each spring, under ...

A team of chemists at McGill University, working with a colleague from Charité-Universitätsmedizin, in Germany, has uncovered part of the process used by mussels to bind to rocks and to quickly ...

Silk is usually made from the cocoons spun by silkworms - but there is another, much rarer, cloth known as sea silk or byssus, which comes from a clam. Chiara Vigo is thought to be the only person ...

The ultra-rare material made from fibers – byssus – harvested from giant mollusks was once the height of fashion, for items such as the hat going under the hammer in New York On Wednesday, a curious ...

You probably won’t see them at the fish counter, but when mussels are hauled in fresh from the sea, their byssus threads – forming a yellowish mat of fine hairs – are sometimes still hanging from the ...

Discover the latest articles and news in related subjects. Here, we present the crystal structure of PTMP1, representing the first molecular structure of a protein from the mussel byssus. The two VWA ...

Sea silk has one of fashion’s strangest origin stories. It starts as a mollusk’s anchor thread and ends up looking like spun gold. This thread (technically called byssus) is what mollusks use to ...

How do you create strong, yet quick-release connections between living and non-living tissues? This is a question that continues to puzzle bioengineers who aim to create materials that bond together ...

The sticky threads that mussels use to attach themselves to rocks could be used to repair bones, tendons and even replace stitches. Richard Gray Richardgray 23 July 2013 • 4:00pm Mussels use byssus ...