Generation of the strongest known biomaterial from the teeth of the common limpet, Patella vulgata

The radula of the common limpet, Patella vulgata, is an organelle used to scrape food such as algae from surfaces for digestion. The fully developed teeth of the radula have been shown to have properties that make it one of the strongest biological materials to exist, exceeding the strength of even spider silk. Chitin scaffolds become mineralised along the length of the radula as tooth development progresses. In this study, we use an RNA seq and de novo assembly approach to generate a transcriptome for the common limpet, and identify changes in gene expression throughout tooth development in the radula.