Overview

The work of the Oxford Silk Group can be divided into four general areas:

Evolution: The web, typically in combination with a powerful poison, is the spider’s principal tool in its struggle for survival.  It is a highly tuned, light-weight net-structure that relies on skilful engineering and the fitting deployment of a most versatile material: the spider’s famous silk.   A typical web spider might have 7 different types of silk with some tuned to suit specific conditions. 

Individual silk threads of micron diameters are actively drawn from microscopic spinning spigots perched on motile spinneret mounds, resembling miniature batteries of battle-ship gun-turrets. 

Behaviour: Our group studies the web construction behaviour of spiders, the engineering of orb webs and the tuning of spider’s silks.

Silks: Recently we have begun to examine in great detail the physical and chemical properties of silks, and the molecular structure-function relationships not only of the finished fibre but also its formation.

Spinning:  The extreme toughness of spider dragline silks depends on the controlled folding of all component proteins in the spinning duct.  The structure of the protein feedstock in combination with the extrusion process produces the hierarchical structure of the multi-protein silk thread.  The spider's complex spinning process is a process that is largely devoted to the controlled extraction of water from an already rather concentrated protein-dope solution.   Comparing spider and insect spinning is providing new insights into natural extrusion processes.

In addition we are fortunate to have a complete set of state-of-the-art biomaterial characterisation tools at our disposal.