Holland Lab Awarded New DOD-ARO Grant

Holland Lab Awarded New DOD-ARO Grant

The Holland Lab was awarded a new DOD-ARO grant this month! The grant is titled: “Structural Biology of Aciniform Spider Silk Guides Biomimetics for a New Class of Biomaterials”. The project will focus on understanding prey wrap spider silk structure and assembly including its unique hydration-induced cross-linking property. The work will rely heavily on a combination of solution and solid-state NMR together with XRD and MD modeling to understand the holistic aciniform silk assembly process from spinning dope to fiber. This structural biology work on the native system will guide the biomimetic design of silk peptide mimics of aciniform spider silk structure-function.