full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Cheryl Hayashi: The magnificence of spider silk

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But what, exactly, is spider silk? Spider silk is almost entirely protein. Nearly all of these proteins can be explained by a slgine gene family, so this means that the dvrsitiey of silk types we see today is encoded by one gene family, so presumably the oinrgial sepidr ancestor made one kind of silk, and over the last 380 million years, that one silk gene has duplicated and then diverged, specialized, over and over and over again, to get the large variety of flavors of spider silks that we have today. There are several features that all these skils have in cmomon. They all have a common dgesin, such as they're all very long — they're sort of outlandishly long compared to other proteins. They're very repetitive, and they're very rich in the amino acids glycine and annliae. To give you an idea of what a spider silk protein looks like, this is a dragline silk piteron, it's just a portion of it, from the black wodiw spider. This is the kind of sequence that I love looking at day and night. (Laughter)

Open Cloze

But what, exactly, is spider silk? Spider silk is almost entirely protein. Nearly all of these proteins can be explained by a ______ gene family, so this means that the _________ of silk types we see today is encoded by one gene family, so presumably the ________ ______ ancestor made one kind of silk, and over the last 380 million years, that one silk gene has duplicated and then diverged, specialized, over and over and over again, to get the large variety of flavors of spider silks that we have today. There are several features that all these _____ have in ______. They all have a common ______, such as they're all very long — they're sort of outlandishly long compared to other proteins. They're very repetitive, and they're very rich in the amino acids glycine and _______. To give you an idea of what a spider silk protein looks like, this is a dragline silk _______, it's just a portion of it, from the black _____ spider. This is the kind of sequence that I love looking at day and night. (Laughter)

Solution

  1. silks
  2. spider
  3. design
  4. widow
  5. protein
  6. common
  7. diversity
  8. alanine
  9. single
  10. original

Original Text

But what, exactly, is spider silk? Spider silk is almost entirely protein. Nearly all of these proteins can be explained by a single gene family, so this means that the diversity of silk types we see today is encoded by one gene family, so presumably the original spider ancestor made one kind of silk, and over the last 380 million years, that one silk gene has duplicated and then diverged, specialized, over and over and over again, to get the large variety of flavors of spider silks that we have today. There are several features that all these silks have in common. They all have a common design, such as they're all very long — they're sort of outlandishly long compared to other proteins. They're very repetitive, and they're very rich in the amino acids glycine and alanine. To give you an idea of what a spider silk protein looks like, this is a dragline silk protein, it's just a portion of it, from the black widow spider. This is the kind of sequence that I love looking at day and night. (Laughter)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
spider silk 11
spider silks 5
silk fibers 4
capture spiral 4
silk proteins 4
million years 3
silk glands 3
dragline silk 3
repeat unit 3
individual spider 2
spend long 2
long days 2
individual silk 2
silk gland 2
tubuliform silk 2
ampullate silk 2
major ampullate 2
silk gene 2
flying prey 2
toughest dragline 2
toughness values 2
studying spider 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
spend long days 2

Important Words

  1. acids
  2. alanine
  3. amino
  4. ancestor
  5. black
  6. common
  7. compared
  8. day
  9. design
  10. diverged
  11. diversity
  12. dragline
  13. duplicated
  14. encoded
  15. explained
  16. family
  17. features
  18. flavors
  19. gene
  20. give
  21. glycine
  22. idea
  23. kind
  24. large
  25. laughter
  26. long
  27. love
  28. means
  29. million
  30. night
  31. original
  32. outlandishly
  33. portion
  34. protein
  35. proteins
  36. repetitive
  37. rich
  38. sequence
  39. silk
  40. silks
  41. single
  42. sort
  43. specialized
  44. spider
  45. today
  46. types
  47. variety
  48. widow
  49. years