Collaborative project with Mike Kasumovic, Aditya Rawal, James Hook and Penny Martens, UNSW, and Jeff Yarger at Arizona State University.

In this project we investigate, using advanced techniques such as NMR and X-ray diffraction, how the processes of spidrion (MaSp1 and MaSp2) expression and spinning processes acting in the silk gland influence the properties of spider silk, and how responsive these mechanisms are at inducing variation in silk properties in different environments. We are interested in continuing our work comparing silk properties in response to nutritional deprivation across the spider phylogeny.