The Molecular Mechanisms Responsible for the Assembly of Spider Silk Fibers

The work in this proposal will consist of modelling and building a fluidic device to recreate the shearing effect of a spider's gland on spidroin silk dope. We will systematically characterise the shearing effects using cryo-TEM and tomography. In addition to investigating wild type spidroin we will investigate a range of naturally occuring silk proteins from other species to see if the effects of shearing are conserved. We will also develop a series of bio-inspired synthetic polymers that we will use to investigate the combined effect of molecular weight and shear on the mechanical properties of the final spun fibres.