“All natural” just got a bit more interesting. Companies Polartec, provider of sustainable textile solutions, and Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, a biotechnology company centered on the development and ...

Engineers developed a method to create synthetic spider silk at high yields while retaining strength and toughness using mussel foot proteins. Scientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable ...

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 ...

Take a walk through a forest, and you’re bound to come upon a spider web stretching from one tree branch to the next. The intricacy of the web can leave a person in awe, but what is even more ...

Silk proteins generated by bacteria engineered to convert polyethylene into this multipurpose material. Credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Move over Spider-Man: Researchers at Rensselaer ...

Silkworms have been genetically engineered with CRISPR to produce pure spider silk for the first time. The worms could offer a scalable way to create things like surgical thread or bulletproof vests ...

Spiderwebs rarely make a good first impression. Even if you aren't one of the insects they're designed to capture, a sudden coating of silk on your face can be annoying, and possibly alarming if you ...

Spider silk is prized for its unrivaled strength and toughness. But figuring out a way to mass-produce it is no easy feat. Spiders cannot be put to work to pump out the fibers the way silkworms can: ...

Researchers report on a new model for spider silk assembly. The key to spider silk 'spinning' is a combination of acidification and a process known as liquid-liquid phase separation, or LLPS. Of all ...