Spider silk consists of fiber-forming proteins, stored by the spider in a specialized gland. When the spider needs silk, for instance to build a web, it extrudes the silk proteins through a long duct in which they are exposed ...
Materials Science
Nov 04, 2019
0
33
Why are the lightweight silk threads of web spiders tougher than most other materials? Scientists from the Universities of Würzburg and Mainz teamed up to find answers to this question. They were able to show that the natural ...
Biochemistry
Sep 26, 2019
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12
Achieving strength and extensibility at the same time has so far been a great challenge in material engineering: increasing strength has meant losing extensibility and vice versa. Now Aalto University and VTT researchers ...
Materials Science
Sep 16, 2019
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31
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and Slovenia has found a previously unknown protein in the strongest known spider web material. In their paper published in the journal Communications ...
Biological tissues are built when cells anchor to specific sites on a 3-D microfiber network in an extracellular matrix (ECM). Scientists are keen to recreate biological tissues in the lab using bioinspired tissue engineering ...
Nature has evolved protein-based substances with mechanical properties that rival even the best synthetic materials. For example, pound for pound, spider silk is stronger and tougher than steel. But unlike steel, the natural ...
Materials Science
Apr 02, 2019
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149
Spider silk is one of the toughest fibres in nature and has astounding properties. Scientists from the University of Würzburg discovered new molecular details of self-assembly of a spider silk fibre protein.
Materials Science
Dec 07, 2018
1
258
A team of researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology has developed a silk protein-based gel that they claim allows for skin healing without scarring. In their paper published in the journal Biomaterials ...
Researchers at Northwestern University and San Diego State University (SDSU) have better unraveled the complex process of how black widow spiders transform proteins into steel-strength fibers. This knowledge promises to aid ...
Materials Science
Oct 22, 2018
3
334
Spider silk is among the strongest and toughest materials in the natural world, as strong as some steel alloys with a toughness even greater than bulletproof Kevlar. Spider silk's unmatched combination of strength and toughness ...
Biotechnology
Aug 21, 2018
0
13
