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New protein found in strongest spider web material
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and Slovenia has found a previously unknown protein in the strongest known spider web material. In their paper published in the journal Communications Biology, the group describes their study of Darwin's bark spider silk and the glands that produce it.
[...] Darwin's bark spiders are a type of orb spider, which means they make their spider webs in the shape of a spoked wheel. They make the largest known orb webs of any spider, which they spin above the surfaces of streams. Prior research has shown that the spider actually makes seven different kinds of silk for use in different parts of its web. One of those silk types, called dragline, is used to build the spokes that give the wheel its strength. Prior research has shown it to be the strongest spider silk in existence. In this new effort, the researchers took a closer look at the dragline silk and the gland that produces it.
The researchers found two familiar types of spindroins—types of repetitive proteins—called MaSp1 and MaSp2, which are found in many spider silks. But in the dragline from Darwin's bark spiders, they found another spindroin, which they named MaSp4a. Study of this protein revealed that contained high quanitities of an amino acid called proline, which prior research has shown is generally associated with elasticity. The protein also had less of some of the other components found in MaSp1 and MaSp2, which made it quite unique.
Related Stories
Biomimicry is the concept of drawing design inspiration from the natural world, such as for materials design, structural design, process flow, etc. The idea is that Nature has spent millennia optimizing structures and designs for cohabitation within the environment. We see stories all the time here that talk about materials inspired by spider silk, sea sponges, algae, etc. These are all typically focused studies that look at only a specific aspect of the material or design.
In a paper to be published in the journal Earth's Future, researchers look at current resiliant design practices and recommend several pragmatic opportunities for infrastructure managers to make improvements by incorporating biomimicry principles within the design process. These six principles, dubbed Life's Principles are: evolve to survive, adapt to changing conditions, be locally attuned and responsive, integrate development with growth, be resource efficient, and use life-friendly chemistry. They find that current resilient design theory--in theory--addresses all of the biomimicry principles, but in practice they largely ignore and sometimes contradict these principles. They note that a lot of effort has been spent addressing efficiency, but that substantial design advantages would be realized if infrastructure managers tried to align to more biomimicry principles.
Journal Reference:
Alysha M. Helmrich, Mikhail V. Chester, Samantha Hayes, et al. Using Biomimicry to Support Resilient Infrastructure Design [open], Earth's Future (DOI: 10.1029/2020EF001653)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Tuesday July 30 2019, @12:29PM
The piece is very nice, it just did not cause discussion. Great submission.
Can I meekly suggest a like button for Soylent?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 30 2019, @04:48PM
comes super stretchy, super strong, thongs! Get yours for the summer!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday July 30 2019, @05:15PM (3 children)
Can someone do the math on this strongest of all spider web protein vs the tension it would take to permanently affix a low orbit object to the ground under centrifical tension?
4 + 2 - 2.4154 x 500 toe lint / gravity + 1 = go for it
Spiders will be able to totally upgrade themselves with all the patent money.
There's got to be some Larry Niven planet out there with giant spiders on planets with less gravity building giant terrifying space elevators all over a planet.
Again, france, France, I am accepting job offers to be 1 or more of your 4 super sci fi writers who are going to totally predict what is going to be killing us next.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:31PM (2 children)
I can’t do the math, but a relevant parameter of interest would be “breaking length”, see http://wordpress.mrreid.org/2013/08/10/breaking-length/ [mrreid.org].
Spider silk comes in at less than one third of the best synthetic materials.
Of course, the nature of the constraint is a lot more complicated for a space elevator or tether.
(Score: 1) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)
even *these* superspiders? (well probably yeah it's not going to be 5 orders of magnitude stronger)
and then people will fly cessnas into it by accident and you'd have things flying off into space at a random vector and high velocity, which could be fun, maybe another plot for a movie(hi France :).
at any rate thank you for the informative serious answer, I learned something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @07:32PM
Their web spans the galaxy and you have been caught in its sticky fibers!