Arachnid Rapunzel: Researchers spin spider silk proteins into artificial silk

Incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk is a lightweight, biodegradable wonder material with numerous potential biomedical applications. But although humans have been colonizing relatively placid silkworms for thousands of years, harvesting silk from territorial and sometimes cannibalistic spiders has proven impractical. Instead, labs hoping to harness spider silk's mechanical properties are using its molecular structure as a template for their own biomimetic silks.

A team of researchers from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia is focusing on the toughest of the spider's seven types of silk -- aciniform silk, used to wrap up prey that blunders into its web. Over the past few years, they have gradually unraveled its protein architecture and begun to understand the connection between its structure and function. They will present their latest findings at the 59th meeting of the Biophysical Society, held Feb. 7-11 in Baltimore, Md.