Unraveling another secret of spider silk—it's a cable
Scientists are spinning out the secrets of one of nature's most intriguing and potentially valuable materials—spider silk.
Nov 07, 2018
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Mystery of how black widow spiders create steel-strength silk webs further unravelled
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 ...
Engineering scientists use bacteria to create biosynthetic silk threads stronger and more tensile than before
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 ...
Gene editing technique allows silkworms to produce spider silk
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has succeeded in using a gene editing technique to get silkworms to produce spider silk. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy ...
For 100 million years, amber freezes a tableau of Burmese bugs' life-and-death struggle
One day in Myanmar during the Cretaceous period, a tick managed to ensnare itself in a spider web. Realizing its predicament, the tick struggled to get free. But the spider that built the web was having none of it. The spider ...
A new kind of vaccine based on spider silk
To fight cancer, researchers increasingly use vaccines that stimulate the immune system to identify and destroy tumour cells. However, the desired immune response is is not always guaranteed. In order to strengthen the efficacy ...
Scientists discover key mechanism behind the formation of spider silk
A group of scientists led by researchers from the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) have examined the soluble precursor of spider silk and found that a previously undiscovered structural element is key ...
Female nursery web spiders judge males based on gift quality, not the wrapping paper
One of the central features of courtship behavior in the nursery-web spider (Pisaura mirabilis) is that the male must have a gift on hand in order to make a good impression on the females. So before setting out to look for ...
Spider silk could be used to power microphones in hearing aids, cell phones
Would you want a spider web inside your ear? Probably not. But if you're able to put aside the creepy factor, new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York shows that fine fibers like spider silk actually ...
Nanomaterials help spiders spin the toughest stuff
Spiders' silk is already tough stuff—just ask your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman.
