There is an urgent need to improve the sustainability of the materials we produce and use.
Here, we explore what humans can learn from nature about how to sustainably fabricate …

Peptides and proteins are naturally chiral molecular systems so that sensing their structure
and conformation with chirality-based spectral methods is an obvious and long-used …

Spider silk fiber rapidly assembles from spidroin protein in soluble state via an incompletely
understood mechanism. Here, we present an integrated model for silk formation that …

Membraneless organelles formed by liquid–liquid phase separation of proteins or nucleic
acids are involved in diverse biological processes in eukaryotes. However, such cellular …

The combination of high fire retardancy, high strength, and great toughness as well as good
healability is essential for successful real-world applications of polymeric materials in the …

The ability of amyloid proteins to form stable β-sheet nanofibrils has made them potential
candidates for material innovation in nanotechnology. However, such a nanoscale feature …

Spider dragline silk is a remarkable fiber made of unique proteins—spidroins—secreted and
stored as a concentrated aqueous dope in the major ampullate gland of spiders. This feat …

The tiny spider makes dragline silk fibers with unbeatable toughness, all under the most
innocuous conditions. Scientists have persistently tried to emulate its natural silk spinning …

Proteinaceous fibers based on spidroins have attracted widespread attention due to their
lightweight and mechanically strong properties. Presently, mechanical modulation is mainly …

During storage in the silk gland, the N-terminal domain (NT) of spider silk proteins
(spidroins) keeps the aggregation-prone repetitive region in solution at extreme …