1a3_0727_ Archetypes of Spider Silk

Abstract

Spider dragline silk is well-known for their excellent strength, extensibility, toughness and biological properties which overwhelmingly exceeds most of the engineered materials available today. Development of spider silk inspired materials is gaining interest due to their wide range of application potential. Various strategies like synthesis of recombinant spider silk, synthetic peptide polymers and polymer silk composites have been used to produce artificial spider silk materials. In our research group, we had demonstrated all these approaches to develop spider silk inspired fibers and materials.