Proteins' web of intrigue

Gram for gram, spider silk has a breakage energy 100 times higher than steel and an elasticity far greater than natural rubber. Spider silk also has a low density and stiffness and would be the ideal material for engineering and technological applications, but for one small detail. How do you mass produce the material without coercing billions of spiders to do the job? Recently, however, work by Thomas Scheibel's research group at the Technical University of Munich has led towards a better understanding of spider silk that might one day lead to a synthetic version with many of its desirable properties. The researchers have discovered that key to the spider's spinning success is the interaction between the water friendly, hydrophilic, and fat friendly, lipophilic, properties of different silk proteins.¹