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Publications

 Our team has published over 100 research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. For more about the spiders, silk, and methods we work with see below. 

 

Nephila & Trichonephila

Golden orb spiders are distributed throughout eastern and southern Asia and are very common in Taiwan. They are amongst the largest web-building spiders and thus construct large, golden webs used to capture insect prey.

Heteropoda

 Huntsmen spiders are common ground-dwelling predators in Taiwan that are known to forage at night. They use a conspicuous white stripe, which looks like a moustache, to lure insects before leaping through the air to catch their prey.

Argiope

Garden orb spiders are brightly colored along their legs and abdomen. These spiders are particularly well known for the silken stabilimenta decorations they use to attract prey into their orb webs and have evolved various patterns in different species.

 Silk collection methods

 Silk is collected gently and safely from spiders using custom-made facilities. We use an electric motor with adjustable speeds to spin silk directly from the spider.

 Characterization of silk mechanical performance

 We use a NanoBionix ® UTM nanomechanical tensile tester to determine mechanical properties and performance of spider silks. These methods have been used to determine variability in response to composition, and spinning conditions. 

 Profiling of silk composition

 We use high performance liquid chromatography to ascertain the amino acid composition of spider silk using Pico-Tag amino acid columns. These methods have been used in studies to determine variation in silk composition across time and correlation with secondary protein structure.

 Applications for spider silk

In a collaboration with the spider silk research lab at UNSW, we
show a roadmap for bringing biologists, engineers and designers together to
harness the properties of spider silks within wearable fabrics.

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