Nature also does things differently than us by synthesizing polypeptides in water. Most of our syntheses, in fact, don't use water. We synthesize our polyamides in toxic organic solvents. Sometimes we burn the, but more and more we try to recycle these materials. An example of how nature uses water in this way, and one which we still haven't figured out is the production of spider silk.
Spiders spin their webs from solutions of polypeptides in water.
These solutions are squeezed through the spider's tiny spinneret and elongated quickly to form the spider webs which we've all seen and sometimes gotten tangled in. What's really weird is that, once these spider webs form, they are no longer soluble in water. If we could just figure out how spiders first make spider silk in water and then spin their webs from it, we could make nylon the same way. This might save us a lot of waste disposal problems, and money. Please inform us of your e-mail address.