Spider silk and amyloid fibrils: a structural comparison
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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Synthetic Spider Silk Production on a Laboratory Scale
Published on: July 18, 2012
Ute Slotta1, Simone Hess, Kristina Spiess
1Department Chemie, Lehrstuhl für Biotechnologie, Technische Universität München, Lichtenbergstr. 4, 85747 Garching, Germany.
Abstract:
Although spider silks have been studied for decades, the assembly properties of the underlying silk proteins have still not been unravelled. Previously, the detection of amyloid-like nanofibrils in the spider's silk gland suggested their involvement in the assembly process.Recombinantly produced spider silk also self-assembles into nanofibrils. In order to investigate the structural properties of such silk nanofibrils in more detail, they have been compared to amyloid-like fibrils to highlight structural similarities.
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