Statistical approaches for investigating silk properties

Amino acid repeats or motifs have engendered interest because of their significance for protein physical characteristics as well as folding properties. Spider dragline silk proteins are unique because they are composed of long repetitive sections and relatively short non-repetitive sections that are known to interact to generate the very peculiar mechanical and solubility properties of silk. Computational analysis compared with in vitro measurements suggest that the silks achieve their unique pattern of extreme solubility inside the spider glands/complete insolubility outside by correlating their repetitive hydrophobic regions through a type of stochastic resonance, generated by the addition of the non-repetitive sequences to a basically periodic hydrophobicity pattern.