Dynamic Evolution of the Spider Silk Gene Family

There are more than 50,000 species of spiders, and they all spin silk. Indeed, spiders utilize an astounding diversity of task-specific silks with extraordinary properties. The extreme toughness of dragline silk rivals the best manufactured materials, while other silks can be incredibly stretchy or sticky. A single, spider-specific gene family encodes spider silk proteins (called ‘spidroins’). How can one gene family underlie the remarkable array of specialized silks found in nature? In this Presidential Lecture, Cheryl Hayashi will discuss the spidroin gene family and the evolutionary dynamics that have shaped the complexity of silk structure and function over the last 300 million years.