Spider silk has been the focus of many ongoing investigations due to it being a biopolymer with remarkable mechanical properties. Spiders can produce up to 7 different types of silk, which have been tailored by nature for different uses ranging from wrapping prey, to building webs. Although dragline silk has been the main focus of investigations to date due to its high toughness, some of the other silks that spiders produce also have interesting mechanical properties. Spiders surround their eggs with an enclosure of silk to protect them during development; this silk is known as egg sac (case) silk and can be the stiffest type of silk that spiders produce. Characterizing the molecular level details in the structure which gives rise to the large difference in mechanical properties between different silks, will allow synthetic silks mimics to more specifically tailored for their application. In an effort to further the understanding of the structure-function relationship of the silks used to produce egg sacs, a combination of 1-dimensional(1D) and 2-dimensional (2D) solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy techniques have been implemented to interrogate the structure of the egg case silk from several species of spider. Amino acid analysis (AAA) of the spider silks has been carried out using acid hydrolysis followed by quantitative liquid-state NMR. Furthermore, mechanical testing and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have been utilized to gain an understanding of the mechanical properties of the egg sac silks.

Elucidation of the molecular structure and dynamics of egg sac spider silks using solid-state NMR

2019 Fall National Meeting

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