Stretching spider silk increases hydrogen bonding, improving mechanical strength

Spiders stretch their silk when spinning their webs. Researchers knew that this was important to strengthen the silk fibres but only now has it been discovered why. A new study reveals, through computational methods, that when silk fibres are stretched after being spun their protein chains align, intermolecular interactions increase and mechanical properties improve. This work could contribute to efforts to optimise synthetic silk production and validate the importance of computational methods, alongside experimental research, in designing silk inspired materials for biomedical and material science applications.