Silk Moths’ Secrets (for Nobel prize-winner Adolf Friedrich Butenandt)
By MJG
Mon, 04 Feb 2019
- 307 reads
Party Member 3716562 calculated
bomber pilots’ oxygen uptake, surrendered
human sex hormones to crystalline,
drawn to female silk moths’ volatile pheromones.
Lured by their survival on toxic mulberries,
how flightless males fluttered through storms
to jasmine-scented mates.
He gathered liquid cocoons for twenty years.
Pierced extraneous males with needles,
preserved half-a-million females for silk extraction,
all their lustrous protein unbound
for kimonos, parachutes and sutures.
Nature’s silky, lipid key
tomorrows chemical communication.
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