1. For a general picture of the history of silk (from a British and European perspective) see:The Story of Silkby John Feltwell 1991 ISBN 0-86299-611-2 published by Alan Sutton, Stroud, Gloucestershire (Most of the historical material mentioned here is taken from this book)
2. For a recent general book on spider silk (covered from a biological standpoint), seeSpiderwebs and Silk: Tracing Evolution from Molecules to Genesto phenotypes by Catherine L. Craig, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York ISBN 0195129164
3. A detailed series of papers on silkworm fibroin and sericin is given inSilk: the structure and processingofsilk yarnedited by Nobumasa Hojo (Translated from the Japanese) Pub. by Science Publishers, Inc., Enfield, NH ISBN 1-57808-151-3
4. A recent definitive review of the industrial research into the production of recombinant spider silk at DuPont is given in the article, by O'Brien, Fahnstock, Termonia and Corwin Gardner: Nylon from Nature: Synthetic Analogues to Spider Silk,Advanced Materials1998, 10 no. 15 pp. 1185–1195.(Kevlar from Naturewould perhaps have been a more appropriate title)
5. The idea that spider silk is a model system for studying amyloid formation is proposed by Kenny, Knight. Wise and Vollrath inEur. J. Biochem.269, 4159 (2002)