Spiders and their silk are the products of millions of years of evolution, and, according to Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig, they provide us with a unique peephole into the world of biological evolution. Spider Silk teaches the reader about evolutionary theory while explaining the evolution ...
Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, “How do they do that?” The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with ...
The N. clavipes genome provides evidence for evolutionary mechanisms like tandem duplication that may underlie spidroin diversification, and our data support estimates that rapid silk evolution accompanied the emergence of the orb web ∼213 million years ago37. We used the results of our genome-...
Here we show that the analysis of maximum supercontracted single spider silk fibers using X ray diffraction shows a complex picture of silk evolution where some key microstructural features are conserved phylogenetically while others show substantial variation even among closely related species. This new...
tarantulas fall under the suborder Mygalomorphae. These spiders have fangs that point downwards. They grow larger and heavier than the Araneomorphae. Mygalomorphae like the Tarantulas don’t use silk to make the web; instead, they use their strength, venom and ambush techniques to catch ...
et al. Spider genomes provide insight into composition and evolution of venom and silk. Nat. Commun. 5, 3765 (2014).This paper presents the first characterized spider genome. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar Clarke, T.H. et al. Multi-tissue transcriptomics of the black widow spider ...
Because the orb weaver’s survival depends on its silk, some 400 million years of evolution have fine-tuned a remarkably tough and versatile material. Now, research groups all over the world are competing to spin the first artificial spider silk, a job that requires a three-step approach: ...
Spider - Webs, Silk, Predators: Spiders that use silk to capture prey utilize various techniques. Many web spiders construct silk sheets in vegetation; the most elaborate webs are those of the orb weavers. Order Araneida (Araneae) has more than 46,700 sp
Beckwitt, R., Arcidiacono, S. and Stote, R. Evolution of repetitive proteins: spider silks from Case, S.T. and Thornton, J.R. High molecular mass complexes of aquatic silk proteins. Int. J. Biol. Macromol. 1999; 24: 89–101. ...
and structural proteins of silk are encoded by members of a single gene family, the spidroin genes40. Mygalomorph spiders are considered to have a single or a few undifferentiated glands, however, during the evolution of the araneomorph spiders, their glands have differentiated into specialized ...