The name of this superfamily has been modified since the most recent official CATH+ release (v4_3_0). At the point of the last release, this superfamily was named:

"
Spidroin, repetitive domain
".

Functional Families

Overview of the Structural Clusters (SC) and Functional Families within this CATH Superfamily. Clusters with a representative structure are represented by a filled circle.

Superfamily: Spidroin, repetitive domain

Spidroins are large silk proteins which display relatively conserved terminal domains and a characteristic core repetitive region that amounts to around 90 % of the full length sequence and is believed to dominate the mechanical properties of spider silk. Spidroins are secreted into silk glands and then stably stored where there concentration increases up to 50 % (w/w) allowing them to orderly self-assembled into silk fibers. Spider silks are renowned for their excellent mechanical properties and biomimetic and industrial potentials. The orb-web spiders employ up to seven types of abdominal glands to produce silks for various purposes, ranging from prey capture to offspring protection in egg cases. Egg-case silk fibroins are synthesized only in female tubuliform (cylindrical) silk glands for the construction of protective egg cases, where eggs undergo development. Two spidroins, tubliform spidroin (TuSp1), the major component of egg-case silk, and the recently characterised aciniform spidroin (AcSp1) participate in the egg case formation: AcSp1 forms the inner egg case, while TuSp1 forms the outer egg case. Studies on both proteins have revealed poor sequence similarity between their respective repetitive (RP) domains but a remarkable structural identity, the latter suggests that these two spidroins may share some common characters in fiber formation mechanism and silk fiber properties PMID:23129012,PMID:19458259.

GO Diversity

Unique GO annotations
1 Unique GO terms

EC Diversity

Unique EC annotations
0 Unique EC terms

Species Diversity

Unique species annotations
44 Unique species

Sequence/Structure Diversity

Overview of the sequence / structure diversity of this superfamily compared to other superfamilies in CATH. Click on the chart to view the data in more detail.

Superfamily Summary

A general summary of information for this superfamily.
Structures
Domains: 4
Domain clusters (>95% seq id): 4
Domain clusters (>35% seq id): 3
Unique PDBs: 4
Alignments
Structural Clusters (5A): 1
Structural Clusters (9A): 1
FunFam Clusters: 2
Function
Unique EC:
Unique GO: 1
Taxonomy
Unique Species: 44