Secrets of the Black Widow’s Web
Orange County, CA - October 24th, 2018 - Black widows are poisonous arachnids, meaning the skeleton is outside their segmented body, with eight jointed legs. Male and female black widow spiders look different. Females are the most distinctive, with shiny black bodies and a red hourglass-shaped marking on the underside of their abdomen. Males are lighter, usually brown or gray with red or pink spots on their backs. Black widow spiders are found in temperate regions of the world, including North America, Southern Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Their fatal poison is said to be 15 times more potent, than rattlesnake venom.
Their web appears to be uneven and tangled; however, it’s strategically planned. The spider’s silk is known to be the strongest of all silk. It is composed of a mixture of protein crystals in a matrix of amino acids. Previous research hypothesized that spider silk proteins await the spinning process as nano-size amphiphilic spherical micelles (clusters of water-soluble and non-soluble molecules) before being funneled through the spider's spinning apparatus to form silk fibers.
Researchers at Northwestern University and San Diego State University (SDSU) have better unraveled the intricate process of how black widow spiders transform proteins into steel-strength fibers. With this knowledge, this will aid scientists to create equally strong synthetic materials.
“The knowledge gap was literally in the middle. What we didn't understand completely is what goes on at the nanoscale in the silk glands or the spinning duct -- the storage, transformation, and transportation process involved in proteins becoming fibers, “said Northwestern's Nathan C. Gianneschi.
Researchers utilized complementary, state-of-the-art techniques which included nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, at SDSU, and electron microscopy at Northwestern University. The team was able to view the inside of the protein gland where the silk fibers begin much closer. It revealed a much more complex, hierarchical protein assembly.
“We now know that black widow spider silks are spun from hierarchical nano-assemblies (200 to 500 nanometers in diameter) of proteins stored in the spider's abdomen, rather than from a random solution of individual proteins or from simple spherical particles, “said Gregory P. Holland, associate professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry at SDSU.
“One cannot overstate the potential impact on materials and engineering if we can synthetically replicate this natural process to produce artificial fibers at scale,” said Gianneschi,
If researchers are able to imitate the spider silk, “the practical applications for a material like this are essentially limitless,” Holland said. It can include high-performance textiles for military, first responders, and athletes; environmentally friendly replacements for plastics; or building materials for cable bridges and other construction.
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Secrets of the Black Widow’s Web Orange County, CA – October 24th, 2018 – Black widows are poisonous arachnids, meaning the skeleton is outside their segmented body, with eight jointed legs. Male and female black widow spiders look different. Females are the most distinctive, with shiny black bodies and a red hourglass-shaped marking on the underside of […]