Spider Silk: A Smart Biopolymer with Water Switchable Shape Memory Effects -Unraveling the Mystery of Superconraction

The work represents an advance in understanding spider silks related to supercontraction which is clearly the water triggered shape recovery phenomenon. A structural model of spider silks is established, which can integrate a number of phenomena such as tunable mechanical properties, the origin, functions and ground state of supercontraction. The shape memory mechanism of protein fibers lays foundation for man-making and bio-mimicking spider silks using chemical approaches rather than genetic ones.