Prey-wrap Spider Silk Review Published
Our review “Prey-wrapping spider silk as a model for tough and adaptable protein materials” is now in press at Communications Materials.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-025-01039-z
While most spider silk research has focused on dragline silk, aciniform (prey-wrapping) silk is actually the toughest silk spiders produce, yet it has remained comparatively underexplored. In this Review, we synthesize work spanning solution and solid-state NMR, Raman spectroscopy, microscopy, mechanics, and computational modeling to show how aciniform silk’s distinctive hybrid α-helical/β-sheet architecture underlies its exceptional toughness, extensibility, and adaptability.
The Review also highlights:
- hydration-induced β-sheet crosslinking unique to prey-wrapping silk
- insights from AlphaFold structure prediction
- advances in recombinant and chimeric silk designs
- opportunities for bio-inspired, protein-based materials in biomedical and engineering applications
This work was co-authored with Kevin Chalek, my current postdoctoral researcher, and draws heavily on research from our lab supported by the Department of Defense Army Research Office (DOD-ARO).