New material inspired by the gelatinous jaw of a sea worm

'Our work toward the designing of the multi-functional material may provide another pathway to directly control the material property and deformation without electronic devices.' Because the material was developed in collaboration with the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the details of how it's made are not publicly available, said Dr Dr Martín-Martínez. Dr Martín Martínez, who specialized in the design and modelling of materials, believes that most of the problems being addressed with technology'have already been solved by nature, almost always in a much better way than we humans can develop, so for us it is a great source of inspiration,' he said. Nereis virens is a a sandworm that burrows in wet sand and mud. Sandworms make up a large part of the live sea-bait industry, and some sandworms are commercially grown to fulfill the industry's needs. They eat seaweed and microorganisms, and have distinctive traits including long bodies, many parapopdia (fleshy protrusions along the body) and blue heads with two large pincer teeth. The worm's jaw has a texture similar to gelatin - but if its environment changes, it can become hard. Its jaw is composed of a protein that contains large amounts of histidine, an amino acid that interacts with the ions of the environment and makes it more or less flexible depending on the environment in which it finds itself.