Abstract
Spider capture silk is a natural material that outperforms almost any synthetic material in its combination of strength and elasticity. The structure of this remarkable material is still largely unknown, because spider-silk proteins have not been crystallized. Capture silk is the sticky spiral in the webs of orb-weaving spiders. Here we are investigating specifically the capture spiral threads from Araneus, an ecribellate orb-weaving spider. The major protein of these threads is flagelliform protein, a variety of silk fibroin. We present models for molecular and supramolecular structures of flagelliform protein, derived from amino acid sequences, force spectroscopy (molecular pulling) and stretching of bulk capture web. Pulling on molecules in capture-silk fibres from Araneus has revealed rupture peaks due to sacrificial bonds, characteristic of other self-healing biomaterials. The overall force changes are exponential for both capture-silk molecules and intact strands of capture silk.
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Acknowledgements
We thank D. Bensimon for helping us discover that the force–distance curves are exponential, and H. Gaub, J. Fernandez, S. Fossey, M. Viani, R. Proksch, H. Li, and B. Smith for discussions. This work was supported by NSF MCB grants to H.G.H., NSF DMR grants to P.K.H. and to UCSB's Materials Research Laboratory; ARO DAAG55-98-1-0262 (C.Y.H.), the Robert A. Welch Foundation (D.E.M.), and Asylum Research, Santa Barbara.
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Becker, N., Oroudjev, E., Mutz, S. et al. Molecular nanosprings in spider capture-silk threads. Nature Mater 2, 278–283 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat858
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat858
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