{"id":105967,"date":"2020-04-24T08:42:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T15:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/scientists-shave-the-legs-of-spiders-to-create-anti-adhesive-nanotechnology"},"modified":"2020-04-24T08:42:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T15:42:51","slug":"scientists-shave-the-legs-of-spiders-to-create-anti-adhesive-nanotechnology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/scientists-shave-the-legs-of-spiders-to-create-anti-adhesive-nanotechnology","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Shave The Legs Of Spiders To Create Anti-Adhesive Nanotechnology"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Researchers investigating cribellate spiders have discovered a unique comb structure that could help inform future equipment used to manipulate nanofibers. Nanofibers have been hard to handle in a lab setting as they can stick to the equipment attempting to manipulate them, but a new study published in the journal ACS Applied Nanomaterials<\/a> reveals how spiders can help us to create non-stick tools for such scenarios.<\/p>\n

Cribellate spiders are so named because of their unique web-spinning<\/a> anatomy. Most spiders have a long single spinneret that they use to produce a single thread, whereas cribellate spiders have a silk-spinning organ. This organ acts like a plate with lots of small, ever so slightly raised protrusions, each of which produces a very fine silk just a few nanometers thick. The spiders then comb these thin fibers out using a calamistrum structure on their legs, producing silk with a woolly texture. This woolly-textured silk entraps the spider\u2019s prey, but somehow, they are able to handle it without getting caught up in their own webs.<\/p>\n

Nanofibers<\/a> are a hot area of research right now but one of the difficulties in their handling is that they commonly stick to the equipment trying to manipulate them. Lead author Anna-Christin Joel, from RWTH Aachen University, and her colleagues wondered if the solution to this frustrating problem could be found within the silk-immune spiders\u2019 anatomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers investigating cribellate spiders have discovered a unique comb structure that could help inform future equipment used to manipulate nanofibers. Nanofibers have been hard to handle in a lab setting as they can stick to the equipment attempting to manipulate them, but a new study published in the journal ACS Applied Nanomaterials reveals how spiders [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}