Holland Lab | Partnership

Acta Biomaterialia Paper on Silk Microrheology

Posted on September 12, 2025

Excited to share our latest work with Prof. Rae M. Robertson-Anderson (USD) just accepted in Acta Biomaterialia:“Local viscoelasticity of denaturing spider silk dope is governed by dynamic hierarchical intermolecular interactions”Special shout-out to the lead experimentalists:Karthik Peddireddy (Rae’s postdoc), who spearheaded the optical tweezers microrheology,Hannah Johnson (my recently graduated PhD student), who carried out the spider dissection and dope prep experiments.Together, they uncovered:A universal relaxation timescale (~0.5 s) tied to transient crosslinking,The crucial role of hierarchical assemblies in tuning local viscoelasticity,How concentration and aging reshape mechanical responses through entanglement, crosslinking, and phase separation.These results provide fresh insight into how spiders store aggregation-prone disordered proteins in their glands without premature assembly — and highlight the power of microrheology to probe hierarchical protein assemblies.Huge thanks to my collaborators and mentees for their amazing contributions!Grateful for support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) that made this work possible. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1742706125006737 ...

Building Collaborations: Lorenz Lab Visits SDSU

Posted on September 12, 2025

in Awards, Partnership, Students, Travel

by Holland Lab

Kicked off the new semester at SDSU by hosting Prof. Chris Lorenz (King’s College London) and his postdoc Dr. Fran Thomas for a week of collaboration on our AFOSR project, “Elucidating the Intrinsically Disordered State, Supramolecular Assembly and Protein Condensates in Natural Materials Formation.”Even in the hectic first week of classes, Chris and Fran made a big impact:Chris delivered a fantastic seminar, “Peptide and Protein Interactions Across Scales: Molecular Dynamics Perspectives from Antimicrobial Assemblies to Neuroimmune Signaling and Biomaterials.”They worked closely with my postdocs and PhD students — going beyond the basics to tackle the advanced aspects of molecular dynamics simulations and analysis that are critical for our research.We had in-depth group and one-on-one discussions on ongoing and future directions, building on our strong history of co-authored papers and manuscripts under review.A great way to launch the semester — grateful for the chance to strengthen our SDSU–King’s College London collaboration and excited about the discoveries ahead! ...

Focus Review on Spider Silk Protein LLPS

Posted on June 4, 2025

in Partnership, Publications

by Holland Lab

Excited to share a new focus review just published in Polymer Journal in collaboration with Thomas Scheibel’s group at the University of Bayreuth! https://fiberlab.deOver the past decade, our lab at SDSU has been investigating the structure, storage state, and assembly mechanisms of native spider silk proteins (spidroins), while the Scheibel group has led the way in producing and characterizing recombinant silk systems.This review brings those threads together!We highlight:Our joint NMR work revealing silk protein dynamics and assemblyKey differences and parallels between native and recombinant systemsA unifying framework that connects micelle formation, liquid crystal ordering, and liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) as a concerted, transitional process in silk fiber formation.We also discuss the practical implications of this new model for biomimetic silk spinning and future material design.Huge thanks to AFOSR for supporting this work!Check out the review: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41428-025-01039-3 ...

Prof. Scheibel Visits Holland Lab, SDSU

Posted on February 4, 2024

in Partnership

by Holland Lab

In October 2023, Prof. Scheibel from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, visited the Holland Lab and SDSU to work on collaborative research project and meet with lab members. Prof. Scheibel also gave a seminar to the Department of Chemistry on synthetic spider silk. For more on Thomas' Lab see here: https://fiberlab.de ...

Holland Lab Participates in NSF-ICORPS Program

Posted on February 4, 2024

in Partnership

by Holland Lab

In October 2022, The Holland Lab was part of the NSF-ICORPS program that is focused on commercialization of academic lab research discoveries. PhD graduate student Hannah Johnson, post-doc Dr. Kevin Chalek and Prof. Holland worked with the ICORPS team at SDSU to develop ideas to commercialize aspects of the labs spider silk research. In the future, this may be the spring board to a start-up company spun out of the lab. ...

San Diego State Science Fair

Posted on April 3, 2017

in Partnership

by Holland Lab

Congratulations to high school students Jason Provol and Matt Bronars for their poster presentation “Metabalomic Analysis as a Method for Breast Cancer Diagnosis”, presented at the San Diego State Science Fair. They won top awards and the opportunity to represent San Diego at the Intel International High School Science Fair hosted in LA in July....

Outreach At Gage Elementary School

Posted on March 19, 2015

in Partnership

by Holland Lab

Helping to spur interest in STEM fields early in life is an important part of our mission as researchers. In March, Dr. Holland gave a presenation at Gage Elementary in San Diego where students had the chance to see first-hand what research entails. Naturally, students were very excited by spiders shown during the presentation....