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

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 ...

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 ...

By simulating spider silk in a computational model, the team discovered the stretching process aligns the protein chains within the fibers and increases the number of bonds between those chains ...

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 ...

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 ...

When spiders spin their webs, they use their hind legs to pull silk threads from their spinnerets. This pulling action doesn't just help the spider release the silk, it's also a crucial step in ...