#spidersilk — Public Fediverse posts

Kraig Biocraft Labs sets world record: 1.3 metric tons of spider silk production in one month. Major step toward industrial-scale commercialization of advanced biomaterials. #SpiderSilk #Biotech

#SpiderSilk-making organs evolved due to a 400-million-year-old #genetic oops
#Spiders and silk go hand in hand, but spinnerets may exist thanks to an ancient error
A close look at the genetics and development of #spinnerets — spiders’ silk-making organs — reveals that an early arachnid doubled all of its DNA hundreds of millions of years ago. The findings suggest key, doubled genes were responsible for the #evolution of spinnerets.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/spider-silk-making-organ-evolve-genetic
https://archive.ph/LVsPW

My last big work on spider silk is coming out! We discovered that spider silk does not behave like many people think, and that sometimes with just three bottles you can get more than four types of drinks!

Enjoy the read

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/sm/d5sm01141h

#science #spider #spidersilk #biology #nature #mechanics #engineering #physics

Stronger than steel, softer than skin.
A new era of medicine is being woven, literally! We explore how a Latvian biotech company is biomimetically synthesizing spider silk, nature's most perfect fiber, to create clot-resistant heart valves and scaffolds for lab-grown organs. This is the future of implantable tech.

Read about "The Iron Thread": https://medium.com/@makalin/%EF%B8%8Fthe-iron-thread-how-biotech-is-weaving-spider-silk-into-the-future-of-human-organs-ed25846413b9

#SpiderSilk #Biotech #MedTech #RegenerativeMedicine #Nanotechnology

#Arachtober 12: a small yellow sac spider (_Cheiracanthium_) perches on a fence post and releases a stream of silk strands that are separated and carried aloft by the breeze and (as we've learned in recent years) atmospheric static electricity. If the silk catches on something, the spider can use it to bridge a long gap. Smaller spiders can be borne aloft entirely and traverse long distances, a behaviour called ballooning.

#ArthroBeauty #SpiderSilk #SpiderBehaviour #spiders #Araneae #Cheiracanthiidae

Gene Editing Spiders to Produce Red Fluorescent Silk - Regular vs gene-edited spider silk with a fluorescent gene added. (Credit: Santiag... - https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/gene-editing-spiders-to-produce-red-fluorescent-silk/ #spidersilk #science #spiders #crispr

Gene Editing Spiders to Produce Red Fluorescent Silk https://hackaday.com/2025/05/21/gene-editing-spiders-to-produce-red-fluorescent-silk/ #spidersilk #Science #spiders #CRISPR

Update: managed to get a look at the spider that made the wonky web. It's hard to see from these photos (didn't have my macro stuff on me), but it has only one leg on the right side!

That could account for its messy web, I think.

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiderwebs #SpiderSilk • #Araneae #Araneidae

you ever see a spiderweb that makes you go "girl are you ok???"

(second photo is what the web's supposed to look like. A _Zygiella_ missing-sector orbweaver.)

obligatory "spiders on drugs" video, before you all send it to me: https://youtu.be/sHzdsFiBbFc
and the Travis McEnery video about how orb webs are made, including the backstory of the real "spiders on drugs" experiments: https://youtu.be/8U5KKdhXsgA

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #spiderwebs #SpiderSilk • #Araneae #Araneidae

BTW, here's what a long-jawed orbweaver egg sac looks like when complete. (I had to go home before our gal upthread was completely finished with hers, but got a pic of this fresh one by a spider who was making hers at around the same time.)

#DailySpiderPic #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Araneae #Tetragnathidae #SpiderSilk

Got some footage of a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae) back-combing her silk to make it fuzzy!

It doesn't just tangle up insects; several years ago research showed the silk melds with the waxy coating of some insect cuticles on the molecular level. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0363 :OpenAccess:

https://youtu.be/UvYdfoO4tZE

#DailySpiderVid #SpidersOfMastodon #spiders #Dictynidae #cribellate #SpiderSilk

Synthetic Spider Silk - While spider silk proteins are something you can make in your garage, making usefu... - https://hackaday.com/2024/02/08/synthetic-spider-silk/ #chemistryhacks #microfluidics #modification #biohacking #biomimicry #spidersilk #arachnid #spider #mods #silk

We Finally Made #Synthetic #SpiderSilk | #scishow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtOcr6gMaQ

A dead leaf suspended from a thread of silk down in the woods this morning.
#photo #photography #photooftheday #smartphonephotography #umbria #italy #woods #SpiderSilk #PhotographyIsArt

#Arachtober 10: from back in June, a mesh-web weaver (family Dictynidae) back-combing a line of silk to turn it into a fuzz of nanofibres. Spiders like this have a special sieve-like silk-making organ called a cribellum. This in fact is the ancestral state of most spiders.

Cribellate silk doesn't use glue; rather, it melds with the waxy compounds on some insect exoskeletons. It doesn't stick very well to other surfaces. Later in spider evolution, spiders developed other types of silk that could catch different insects and support more ambitious aerial webs. However, for a minority of spiders, cribellate silk still works just fine.

More details in this 2017 paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.0363 :OpenAccess:

#DailySpiderVid #arachnids #spiders #Araneae #Dictynidae #SpiderSilk #SpiderBehaviour #OpenAccess

20-SEP-2023
#SpiderSilk is spun by silkworms for the first time, offering a green alternative to synthetic fibers

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001587

wow. one of the things we were promised 20 years ago, and it's finally happened. The underlying issue is, of course, that #spiders are notoriously resistant to domestication - territorial, aggressive etc.
#science #biomaterials #biomimetic

Is #SpiderSilk the #Real World #Equivalent to #Mithril?

https://nemozone.writeas.com/is-spider-silk-the-real-world-equivalent-to-mithril

Caught these miracles of nature on my phone on a walk through a park this freezing cold afternoon.

#Photography #WinterWonderland #ColdAndFrosty #Spiders #SpiderSilk

No air currents required: Ballooning spiders rely on electric fields to generate lift - Enlarge / Image from a 2018 observational study of ballooning in large ... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1843641 #aerodynamicdrag #fluiddynamics #aerodynamics #biomechanics #spidersilk #science #biology #physics #spiders

Myth, busted: Spider silk might not have antibiotic properties after all - Enlarge / A new study found that ethyl acetate and other solvents typic... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1805227 #materialsscience #antimicrobial #biomaterials #spidersilk #science #biology #spiders

An internal code repo used by New York State’s IT office was exposed online - A code repository used by the New York state government’s IT department was left e... - http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4zyPciBcVNk/ #continuousintegration #informationtechnology #attorneygeneral #venturecapital #versioncontrol #freesoftware #searchengine #spokesperson #clearviewai #government #spidersilk #moviepass #security #password #software #echelon #samsung #gitlab #dubai #india #git

On some of the chemistry behind spider silk.

"[I]n a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, [Dr. Malay] and his colleagues lay out a new way to tackle the spider silk puzzle, mimicking its orderly exit from the spinneret with chemical tools in the lab."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/science/spider-silk-web-self-assembly.html

#Chemistry #Science #Research #Spiders #SpiderSilk #Materials #Biology