Computer Simulation Cracks Chicken-Egg Puzzle
New tech reveals how a protein kickstarts the formation of calcium carbonate particles.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/computer-simulation-cracks-chicken-egg-puzzle.html
I have always thought it had to be the chicken that came first because the egg can’t lay itself while it is plausible for a chicken-like animal that wasn’t hatched from an egg to lay one.
What is also interesting to me is the self-assembled nature of the shell formation. One of the goals of biomimetic materials is to be able to build them a molecule at a time and doing so is much easier if nature can demo a working system for us.
In case you are interested, this appears to be the scientific citation:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22531977
