Plywood structures in nature

Ordered fibrous composites, also known as plywood structures, are frequently encountered in natural systems, mostly in skeletal or protective extracellular tissues where mineral deposition often occurs. A major challenge in the field of materials science is the possibility to copy supramolecular assemblies described in biological structures. To do this the different structural levels of natural plywoods need to be precisely described and this approach has enabled the definition of organic networks as stabilized analogues of liquid crystals. Recently, there have been successful attempts at mimicking supramolecular ordering with extracellular polymers.