cocoon

It grows. It adds with sophistication.This silkworm cocoon, for example,creates a highly sophisticated architecture,

We realized that designing these templates allowed us to give shape to raw silkwithout boiling a single cocoon.(Applause)

is how do you actually reverse engineer thisand go from cocoon to glandand get water and protein that is your starting material.

Silk, during its self-assembly process,acts like a cocoon for biological matter.And so if you change the recipe,

it creates a tensile structure --and it then starts spinning a compressive cocoon.Tension and compression, the two forces of life,