On July 27, 2021, the National Academy of Sciences’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America (PNAS) published results on joint research by Spiber, Keio University’s Institute for Advanced Biosciences, RIKEN, and Kyoto University regarding the genome sequencing and multiomics analysis of four species of golden orb-weaver spiders.
The results of this study confirm that spider dragline silk is a composite of more than a dozen proteins, including proteins whose function is not yet known. Furthermore, it was shown that the newly discovered protein "SpiCE-NMa1" improves the mechanical characteristics of materials made from spider silk protein.
Spiber will utilize these research results and continue exploring the possibilities of structural protein materials.
Press release can be found
here. (Japanese only. English press release will be available at a later date.)
Details can be found
here.