Spider Silks

Viscid silk with glue drops

Paul Guerette, B.Sc., Ph.D.

Paul Guerette

Paul Guerette (on right) with supervisor John Gosline in a 1996 Vancouver Sun article.

Spiders produce up to seven different types of silk, each with distinct mechanical properties. How do spiders modulate the mechanical properties of their various silks? Mechanical characterization, network modelling and molecular cloning are some of the approaches we have been using to understand the nature of these protein super-fibers.

Paul graduated in 1997

Guerette, P.A., 1997. The Mechanical Properties of Spider Silk are determined by the genetic regulation of fibroin proteins and chemical and physical processing during spinning, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, Canada.