Multiscale mechanisms of nutritionally induced property variation in spider silks.

ABSTRACT: Variability in spider major ampullate (MA) silk properties at different scales has proven difficult to determine and remains an obstacle to the development of synthetic fibers mimicking MA silk performance. A multitude of techniques may be used to measure multiscale aspects of silk properties. Here we fed five species of Araneoid spider solutions that either contained protein or were protein deprived and performed silk tensile tests, small and wide-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS), amino acid composition analyses, and silk gene expression analyses, to resolve persistent questions about how nutrient deprivation induces variations in MA silk mechanical properties across scales. Our analyses found that the properties of each spider's silk varied differently in response to variations in thei

SUBMITTER: Blamires SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5794138 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature