Tufts University bioengineers discover secret of spider, silkworm fiber strength
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. Tufts University bioengineers have discovered how spiders and silkworms are able to spin webs and cocoons made of incredibly strong fibers. The answer lies in how they control the silk protein solubility and structural organization in their glands....... "This finding could lead to the development of processing methods resulting in new high-strength and high-performance...Scientists believe ancient arachnids may have spun silk like modern spiders
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Geologists at Ohio State University have found evidence of silk spinning structures on the fossilized body of a long-extinct relative of modern spiders, one that lived 55 million years before the first dinosaurs.... ...The 300-million-year-old penny-sized creature, called Aphantomartus pustulatus, is a trigonotarbid -- part of an ancient group of arachnids that were among the fi...MIT lab works to mimic spider silk
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--As a fiber, spider silk is so desirable that scientists have spent decades trying to find a way to mimic it. A team at MIT has been tackling the problem from two directions. ......"The main goal is to be able to reproduce the enormous energy absorption and strength-bearing properties of spider silk," said Paula T. Hammond, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Chemical E...Studies of spider's silk reveal unusual strength
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) University of California, Santa Barbara scientists and U.S. Army researchers are making progress in the study of spider dragline silk, according to recently published proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.... ...The protein that lets spiders drop and helps the web to catch prey is what interests the researchers. The molecules are designed to be pulled; they are...Nexia and US Army spin the worlds first man-made spider silk performance fibers
team produces water-stable dragline spider silk fibers using biotechnology;...reported in todays Science ... ......Montreal, Qubec, Canada, and Natick, Massachusetts, January 17, 2002 - Nexia Biotechnologies Inc. (TSE:NXB) and the U.S. Army Soldier Biological Chemical Command (SBCCOM) have reported in this weeks journal of Science that they have made the worlds first spider silk fibers from man-...Dyed In The Silkworm: Researchers Develop Novel Way To Produce Colored Silk
.In the March 1 issue of Genes & Development, Hajime Mori and colleagues at the.Kyoto Institute of Technology in Kyoto, Japan report that they have developed a.technique to produce genetically altered, green fluorescent silk fibers that are.spun by the silkworm. The development of an insect system to produce foreign.proteins has significant potential applications for silk or other economically.i...