Spider silk membranes: structure, function and artificial synthesis.

Progress has recently been made by the named Pis in developing efficient methods for the artifical synthesis of particular types of spider silk proteins (spidroins). The project rotation will involve peptide sequencing of native silk and/or sequencing of cDNAs from silk glands from spiders that produce silks that have rather different physical characteristics to those that have already been characterised. Ultimately we hope to apply the technology that we have already developed to artificially synthesise these novel silks.