Science
Spider Silk Is Stronger Than Steel. It Also Assembles Itself. – The New York Times
Scientists are figuring out the chemical triggers that turn the liquid stored in silk glands into a solid that’s tougher than Kevlar.
Luckily for spiders, millenniums of evolution have made spidroins versatile. The proteins, Dr. Rising explained, are structured like barbells: a long, disorderly string capped on each end by a bolt-like blob. In the silk glands, these barbells are thought to naturally pair up at one end, creating V-shaped duos that slosh around in the dope.
To form the more stable architecture required of solid silk, the spidroins need to link up in chains, using the other ends of the barbells. That seems to happen…
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