June 18, 2019
Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University
A group led by Project Lecturer Noriaki Kono and Associate Professor Kazuharu Arakawa of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture; Masaru Tomita, Director), Keio University, in collaboration with a team from Spiber Inc. (Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture) including researcher Hiroyuki Nakamura, has determined the genome of the orb-weaver spider *Araneus ventricosus*. They have revealed, for the first time in the world, the full picture of diverse spider silk proteins and their related genes, and successfully conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the silk genes. This research also discovered new spider silk genes and the existence of low-molecular-weight proteins that affect the strength of the silk, which is expected to greatly contribute to the future development of artificial spider silk. The findings of this research were published in the British scientific journal *Scientific Reports* on June 10, 2019.
For the full press release, please see below.