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Nature 424, 1010 (28 August 2003) | doi:10.1038/4241010a

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Biomaterials: Silk's secrets

Edward Atkins

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Despite centuries of human use of silk fibres from silkworm cocoons, and an emerging industry devoted to making artificial silk, questions remain about how insects produce it. New work in vitro tackles the problem.

Once solely the purview of insects and spiders, the production of silk fibres is now a biotechnological reality. Fibrous silk is used widely, in materials from clothing to carpets to parachutes, so there's a great deal of interest in understanding the precise details of how it forms from silk proteins — whether in vivo or in artificial circumstances.