Briefs · Frontier Science
How Spiders Spin ‘Silk Dope’ Into Nature’s Toughest Material
Spider silk is tougher than Kevlar and stronger than steel, yet it starts as silk dope, a liquid blend of proteins, water and salt in the spider’s glands. Gregory Holland’s team at San Diego State has watched it reorganise into semiliquid droplets called condensates, using NMR on black widow dragline silk. Two amino acids act as molecular stickers, guiding disordered proteins into gel, then into fibre. Lab-made silk still falls short, and farming spiders is hopeless: it would take a million of them to make a shirt. The verdict is spectacularly spidery: nature’s toughest material is made by a cannibal.
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