LARAMIE -- Large spiders, mucous, cloning animal genes in a lab ... sounds like a horror movie.

All played roles as three researchers at the University of Wyoming attempted to answer a basic question about nature: What makes spider webs sticky? The scientists say they now have the answer. Turns out many spiders that make classic, orb-shaped webs drizzle them with a protein that contains two basic components -- one like spider silk, the other like mucous.

"This is one of the most effective and strong glues that nature has created," said one of the scientists, Omer Choresh, who spent four years studying spider glue as a postdoctoral researcher.

The three also were able to identify and clone the spider genes responsible for making the protein. Eventually that could encourage the development of an environmentally friendly glue with a variety of applications, including in medicine. They published their findings in the Oct. 12 issue of the journal Biomacromolecules.

Scientists have known for about 20 years that spider silk itself isn't sticky. Rather, a glue secreted by the spider guarantees the haplessness of just about any insect unfortunate enough to buzz into its web. Spiders secrete the glue while making their webs, microbiology professor Randolph Lewis said.

"They go along and as they put the silk down, they put a little drop of glue all the way around," Lewis said.

The composition of spider glue was a mystery, however, before the work of Choresh, Lewis and Battuya Bayarmagnai, who at the time was a University of Wyoming undergraduate.

The barns and greenhouses of southeast Wyoming proved good spider habitat as Choresh collected specimens to spin webs and secrete glue in the lab. He analyzed the spider glue, isolating the protein and getting an idea of its makeup.

That gave the scientists clues in looking for the gene sequence responsible for making the glue. To find the gene, they went straight to the source: Inside the gland that produces spider glue.

To dissect a gland from a spider, it helps to have a big spider -- bigger than those commonly found in Wyoming. They got help from down South, buying specimens from a company that collects golden orb weaver spiders in Florida.

Specifically, the researchers needed females, which can grow up to 3 inches long -- six times bigger than male golden orb spiders.

Identifying and cloning the glue gene helped the researchers get a more detailed understanding of the glue protein.

"What we determined was that this glue was really a combination of something that was relatively strong, which is a silk, and something that was very sticky, which is the mucin," Lewis said.

Mucin, basically, is slime -- the slime of human snot and the sticky-slippery trails of slugs and snails.

Next, Lewis wants to figure out how to mass-produce spider glue. Spiders don't produce enough glue to be a good source of the protein, but genetically engineering the spider glue gene into insect cells could provide the answer.

That would be similar to Lewis's ongoing work with goats genetically engineered to produce milk containing spider silk proteins. The idea, eventually, is to use the special milk to produce super-strong threads.

While previous studies have concluded that spider glue is quite sticky, those studies didn't separate spider glue from spider silk. The silk-glue combination could be stickier than the glue alone. "You absolutely don't know," Lewis said. "Is it that the silk protein in the glue has to stick to the silk to work better, or does it work independently?"

Mass-producing the glue separately would sidestep the problem of separating the glue from the thread, helping future research into practical applications of spider glue.

So if you're curious whether spiders could repair a shattered vase ... stick around.