Simulations showed that stretching aligns protein chains and increases hydrogen bonds, which act like tiny bridges between ...

Spider silk is one of the most fascinating natural materials known to humans. It is more flexible than rubber yet tougher than bulletproof Kevlar and five times stronger than steel on a weight per ...

Now, Lewis and other scientists say that silk is so strong, it could be used in advances in artificial ligaments, surgical sutures, and hernia meshes. While other spider threads rely on one ...

Computational analysis provides new insights into silk's mechanical properties that was unavailable experimentally ...

A single silk thread comes out of each. Jan explains, 'Although it looks a bit like an icing nozzle, the silk is pulled out by gravity or the spider's hind leg. The silk is liquid when it's inside the ...

But pound for pound, it's stronger than steel! So if you twisted spider silk into a thread that was 2 millimeters wide — as thick as a strand of spaghetti — it could support 900 pounds before ...

Dragline silk, the thread by which the spider hangs itself from the web, is one of the strongest fibers; its tensile strength—a measure of how much a polymer deforms when strained—is almost thrice ...

Dusty spider webs are associated with Halloween and creepy houses, but many are beautiful or architecturally accomplished. Did you know that you can tell what kind of spider is lurking by the threads ...

Scientists develop strong, flexible carbon nanotube fibers that retain energy storage capacity and conductivity after bending ...

In this case, we’re talking about genetically modified yeast that produces spider silk. If that sounds like a lead-in to some Spiderman jokes and sci-fi references, you are correct on both accounts.

By simulating spider silk in a computational model, the team discovered the stretching process aligns the protein chains ...

Understanding how the stretching process strengthens spider silk is a key part of helping design stronger, biodegradable, silk-inspired materials for various applications. When spiders spin their webs ...