A study of the extraordinarily strong and tough silk produced by bagworms

Taiyo Yoshioka, Takuya Tsubota, Kohji Tashiro, Akiya Jouraku and Tsunenori Kameda ()
Additional contact information
Taiyo Yoshioka: National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO)
Takuya Tsubota: National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO)
Kohji Tashiro: Toyota Technological Institute
Akiya Jouraku: National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO)
Tsunenori Kameda: National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO)

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Global ecological damage has heightened the demand for silk as ‘a structural material made from sustainable resources’. Scientists have earnestly searched for stronger and tougher silks. Bagworm silk might be a promising candidate considering its superior capacity to dangle a heavy weight, summed up by the weights of the larva and its house. However, detailed mechanical and structural studies on bagworm silks have been lacking. Herein, we show the superior potential of the silk produced by Japan’s largest bagworm, Eumeta variegata. This bagworm silk is extraordinarily strong and tough, and its tensile deformation behaviour is quite elastic. The outstanding mechanical property is the result of a highly ordered hierarchical structure, which remains unchanged until fracture. Our findings demonstrate how the hierarchical structure of silk proteins plays an important role in the mechanical property of silk fibres.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09350-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-09350-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09350-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().