Shirts were a source of inspiration for starch-gel electrophoresis (E. Altschuler Nature 543, 179; 2017). They also figured in another pioneering separation technique — polyamide thin-layer chromatography.

At the National Taiwan University in 1958, Kung-Tsung Wang and Yao-Tang Lin heard that German scientists were using polyamide — the primary constituent of nylon — for column chromatography. However, polyamide was unaffordable for scientists in Taiwan so soon after the Pacific War and Chinese Civil War.

The two decided to use their nylon shirts instead. They dissolved them in formic acid, extracted the nylon in ethanol, and air-dried it to a powder to act as a stationary-phase separation medium. Wang eventually published five Nature papers (1965–67) on the basis of results from polyamide thin-layer chromatography.