The thought of reviving it, though, has never quite gone away, and these days the fact that it is made mostly of protein, and could thus be chewed up by bacteria, is regarded as a virtueif only the structural weakness could be overcome. Dr Schiraldis approach does this by using a silicate clay called sodium montmorillonite as a skeleton that holds the plastic together.

　　然而对其进行改良的思想一直没有完全散去，如今看来，只要能够克服结构脆弱的问题，酪蛋白由蛋白质组成并且会被细菌吞噬的性质反而成为了一大优点。Schiraldi博士的方法是用一种叫做蒙脱土的硅酸盐粘土作为骨架将酪蛋白塑料固定在一起。

　　Sodium montmorillonite can be freeze-dried into a spongelike material known as an aerogel. Aerogels are famously fragile. But that is because they are mostly empty space. Indeed, they are sometimes nicknamed solid smoke. This fragility disguises an underlying stiffness. Filling the pores in the aerogel with plastic should remove its fragility and, conversely, the networkof clay molecules in the aerogel will stop the plastic cracking. So the researchers reckoned that if they mixed casein with the clay and added glyceraldehyde , they might be able to make something really rather useful.

　　蒙脱土可以被冷冻干燥成一种叫做气凝胶的海绵状材料。因为主要是空心，所以气凝胶是一种有名的易碎材料。事实上，它们有时候也被戏称为固态烟。 其实，他们的易碎性掩盖了他们坚强的一面。如果将酪蛋白塑料灌入气凝胶的细孔，那么气凝胶将不再易碎，相反，气凝胶中粘土分子的网状系统同样会防止酪蛋白塑料破裂。所以，研究者们认为如果他们将酪蛋白与粘土混合在一起并添加甘油醛，将形成一种非常有用的材料。

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