Morphology and Microstructure of Spider Dragline Silk from Araneus Ventricosus

The spider dragline silk has excellent mechanical properties. The stress- strain curves of dragline silk fibers have intraspecific and intraindividual variability because of the spiders active control during spinning process. To investigate the relationship between the morphology of dragline silk fibers and spinning conditions, four samples were made at the reeling rates of 1mm/s, 20mm/s, 43.5mm/s and 110mm/s from the major ampullate glands of Araneus Ventricosus and the other two of dragline silks were prepared from a crawling or dropping spider. The surface microstructure and nanofibril characteristic were analyzed with atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM images of 2000nm*2000nm and 500nm*500nm of these samples showed that the spinning condition influenced the surface roughness and fibril size, while AFM images of 200nm*200nm clearly displayed that dragline silk of Araneus Ventricosus included sheet macro-conformation structure. These results can facilitate the further investigation of the spinning mechanism of a spider in order to understand mechanical properties and macromolecular structures of dragline silk.