Composition and Hierarchical Organisation of a Spider Silk

Albeit silks are fairly well understood on a molecular level, their hierarchical organisation and the full complexity of constituents in the spun fibre remain poorly defined. Here we link morphological defined structural elements in dragline silk of Nephila clavipes to their biochemical composition and physicochemical properties. Five layers of different make-ups could be distinguished. Of these only the two core layers contained the known silk proteins, but all can vitally contribute to the mechanical performance or properties of the silk fibre. Understanding the composite nature of silk and its supra-molecular organisation will open avenues in the production of high performance fibres based on artificially spun silk material.

• Publication year

  2007

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2007-10-03

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Materials Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0000998PMID 17912375PMCID 1994588
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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