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A whole microcosm of various bizarrely shaped life forms opens up when diatoms, the primary component of ocean plankton, are looked at under a microscope. The regularly structured silica shells of these tiny individual life forms have attracted scientists because they are particularly interesting examples of natural hybrid materials and also demonstrate unusual mechanistic and optical properties. The mechanisms of the underlying biomineralization process are not yet fully understood, but the silica shells often provide inspiration for the synthesis of man-made nanostructures. Researchers at TU Dresden and the Max Planck Institute the Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden have now identified another component of the diatom cell walls. As the team led by Eike Brunner reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they found an organic network of crosslinked chitin filaments.