Fibres spider silk

In man-made fibres, any stretching will irreversibly alter the crystallinity and there is no control of the lateral size of polymer crystals. Semicrystalline polymer networks typically consist of platelet type crystals whose width exceeds their thickness by several order of magnitudes because only the thickness is controlled by the chain folding [61]. In contrast to synthetic fibres, spider silk does not need any mechanical treatment by external forces the constituents self-assemble directly during the spinning-process. These examples clearly demonstrate the need for more detailed control of the mesoscopic structures for further development of man-made materials. 

Bram, A., Branden, C. I., Craig, C., Snigireva, I., and Riekel, C. (1997). X-ray diffraction from single fibres of spider silk. /. Appl. Crystallogr. 30, 390-392. 

Grubb, D. T., andjelinski, L. W. (1997). Fibre morphology of spider silk The effects of tensile deformation. Macromolecules 30, 2860-2867. 

Aspects of X-ray diffraction on single spider fibres. Int.J. Biol. Macromol. 24,179-186. Riekel, C., Mueller, M., and Vollrath, F. (1999b). In situ X-ray diffraction during forced silking of spider silk. Macromolecules 32, 4464-4466. 

Rossle, M., Panine, P., Urban, V. S., and Riekel, C. (2004). Structural evolution of regenerated silk fibroin under shear Combined wide- and small-angle x-ray scattering experiments using synchrotron radiation. Biopolymers 74, 316-327. Rousseau, M. E., Lefevre, T., Beaulieu, L., Asakura, T., and Pezolet, M. (2004). Study of protein conformation and orientation in silkworm and spider silk fibres using Raman microspectroscopy. Biomacromolecules 5, 2247-2257. 

Shao, Z.Z., Young, R.J., and Vollrath, F. "The effect of solvents on spider silk studied by mechanical testing and single-fibre Raman spectroscopy". Int. J. Biol. Macromol. 24(2-3), 295-300 (1999). 

Dragline spider silk has aroused considerable interest due to its excellent mechanical properties, for example stability, elasticity and low weight. A. Bram and co-workers (ESRF) have succeeded in recording X-ray diffraction patterns from a single spider dragline of less than 10 pm diameter(Figure 3(b)). These results allow the elastic properties of the fibres to be linked to the molecular architecture of the polymer chains. 

Figure 3 Examples of Microfocus experiments carried out on ID13 at the ESRF (a) Patterns from the wall of a PET soft drinks bottlef (h) Single Spider Silk fibre. (c) Centre of a PTMS spherulite"...

Lazaris, A., Arcidiacono, S., Huang, Y., Zhou, J.-F., Duguay, F., Chretien, N., Welsh, E.A., Soares, J.W., and Karatzas, C.N. (2002). Spider silk fibres spun from soluble recombinant silk produced in mammalian cells. Science 295, 472-476. 

Natural fibres can be derived either from plants (such as flax or hemp), produced by animals (such as silk or spider silk) or from minerals (such as asbestos). Table 6.1 shows the comparison of selected physical properties between natural fibres and synthetic fibres. Although the mechanical properties of natural fibres are very much lower than those of conventional synthetic fibres, such as glass or carbon fibres. 

D. Porter, J. Guan, F. VoDrath, Spider silk super material or thin fibre Adv. Mater. 25 (2013) 1275-1279. 

C. Allmeling, A. Jokuszies, K. Reimers, S. Kail, C.Y. Choi, G. Brandes, C. Kasper, T. Scheper, M. Guggenheim, P.M. Vogt, Spider silk fibres in artificial nerve constructs promote peripheral nerve regeneration. Cell ftolif. 41(3), 408-420 (2008)... 

Hagn, F., Eisoldt, L., Hardy, J., Vendrely, C., Coles, M., Scheibel, T., and Kessler, H. (2010). A conserved spider silk domain acts as a molecular switch that controls fibre assembly. Nature in press. 

The functional and developmental details of the two so very different elastic recoil mechanisms of the two types of capture silk micro-machines are interesting and deserve deeper studies. However, at present we do not even understand the interaction of form and function in the much more typical spider silk fibre such as a dragline filament. Recent studies indicate that the toughness of spider dragline silk may depend on the complex hierarchical structure of the fibre [11] which in turn depends on a complex... 

Spinning process [17,18], as well as on tuned dopants in the polymer feedstock [19]. Several factors may contribute to the toughness of a spider silk fibre ... 

Riekel, C. and Vollrath, R, Spider silk fibre extrusion combined wide- and small-angle X-ray microdiffraction experiments. Int. J. Biol. Macromol, 2001, 29(3) 203. 

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