ensuring that the fiber would be spun properly. To guide the modifications, the team developed a "minimal basic structure model" of silkworm silk. "This concept of 'localization,' introduced in ...

A Japanese researcher has used thousands of strands of spider silk to spin a set of violin ... resulting in a "packing structure" that leaves practically no space between any of the strands.

Then they covered the structure in live silk worms and let the little buggers go to work. The worms automatically spun silk to reinforce the weakest areas of the structure. Go worms, go!

Collecting the as-spun silk fibers is standard in silk ... Zhang's team tested conductivity and structure after heating the silk fibers at 1,050°C (1,922°F) to carbonize the silk protein ...

The new peptides, following a pattern found in the protein sequence of amyloid polypeptides, helped the artificial silk proteins form an orderly structure ... in the air and spun them together ...

However, these silks are not as durable and are weaker than silk spun by spiders, specifically spider dragline silks which naturally do well under high tension. "Dragline silk is the main ...

Afterward, the spider produced silk as it normally would, but the silk was five times stronger, putting it on par with the likes of pure carbon fibers and Kevlar — the strongest materials on Earth.

His remarkably diverse interests ranged from the chemistry of fermentation to a treatment for rabies; from the three dimensional structure of molecules to ... He became fascinated with the way ...