WIKIMEDIA: CHARLESJSHARP
Species: Golden silk orb-weaver (Nephila clavipes) Genome: 3.45 billion base pairs
A spider’s wispy webs are among the strongest-known biological materials, and are light-weight, elastic, and capable of impeding the spread of bacteria to boot. Together, these qualities make it a promising biomedical tool. To harness its potential, researchers from the United States and Slovenia have sequenced the first genome of the golden silk orb weaver (N. clavipes), a prolific producer of multiple types of silk, and reported their recent findings in the journal Nature Genetics.
“Unbelievably, I learned there was no complete genome sequence of any spider available. The ...
