Why is silk spun?

The silkworm carefully controls both its behaviour and biochemistry in order to create a good fibre. As this stored protein gel is pulled through the silk gland it aggregates - a response to energy input. Mechanical energy, shear, is the primary source of energy for this transformation, and it is this process which was investigated in detail at the ESRF.

To this end, small drops of unspun silk gel were sheared under controlled conditions. Combining SAXS and WAXS enabled studying the aggregation process at all relevant length scales. The next issue of the ESRFnews will provide more in-depth information on the interest of these small-angle scattering experiments, and the results of this experiment will, of course, be published in due time after thorough analysis.

The video recordings of the experiment, already today give a flavour of this not quite usual user visit: http://www.youtube.com/lightforscience#p/u/0/e3Z0D4Y_dM4.