Spider silk: A natural marvel of mechanical and structural strength (original) (raw)
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Bioengineering of spider silks for the production of biomedical materials
Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
Spider silks are well known for their extraordinary mechanical properties. This characteristic is a result of the interplay of composition, structure and self-assembly of spider silk proteins (spidroins). Advances in synthetic biology have enabled the design and production of spidroins with the aim of biomimicking the structure-property-function relationships of spider silks. Although in nature only fibers are formed from spidroins, in vitro, scientists can explore non-natural morphologies including nanofibrils, particles, capsules, hydrogels, films or foams. The versatility of spidroins, along with their biocompatible and biodegradable nature, also placed them as leading-edge biological macromolecules for improved drug delivery and various biomedical applications. Accordingly, in this review, we highlight the relationship between the molecular structure of spider silk and its mechanical properties and aims to provide a critical summary of recent progress in research employing recom...
Development of a Process for the Spinning of Synthetic Spider Silk
ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, 2015
Spider silks have unique mechanical properties but current efforts to duplicate those properties with recombinant proteins have been unsuccessful. This study was designed to develop a single process to spin fibers with excellent and consistent mechanical properties. As-spun fibers produced were brittle, but by stretching the fibers the mechanical properties were greatly improved. A water-dip or water-stretch further increased the strength and elongation of the synthetic spider silk fibers. Given the promising results of the water stretch, a mechanical doublestretch system was developed. Both a methanol/water mixture and an isopropanol/water mixture were independently used to stretch the fibers with this system. It was found that the methanol mixture produced fibers with high tensile strength while the isopropanol mixture produced fibers with high elongation.
Properties of Biomimetic Artificial Spider Silk Fibers Tuned by PostSpin Bath Incubation
Molecules
Efficient production of artificial spider silk fibers with properties that match its natural counterpart has still not been achieved. Recently, a biomimetic process for spinning recombinant spider silk proteins (spidroins) was presented, in which important molecular mechanisms involved in native spider silk spinning were recapitulated. However, drawbacks of these fibers included inferior mechanical properties and problems with low resistance to aqueous environments. In this work, we show that ≥5 h incubation of the fibers, in a collection bath of 500 mM NaAc and 200 mM NaCl, at pH 5 results in fibers that do not dissolve in water or phosphate buffered saline, which implies that the fibers can be used for applications that involve wet/humid conditions. Furthermore, incubation in the collection bath improved the strain at break and was associated with increased β-sheet content, but did not affect the fiber morphology. In summary, we present a simple way to improve artificial spider si...
Communications Materials
Artificial spider silk has emerged as a biobased fiber that could replace some petroleum-based materials that are on the market today. Recent progress made it possible to produce the recombinant spider silk protein NT2RepCT at levels that would make the commercialization of fibers spun from this protein economically feasible. However, for most applications, the mechanical properties of the artificial silk fibers need to be improved. This could potentially be achieved by redesigning the spidroin, and/or by changing spinning conditions. Here, we show that several spinning parameters have a significant impact on the fibers’ mechanical properties by tensile testing more than 1000 fibers produced under 92 different conditions. The most important factors that contribute to increasing the tensile strength are fast reeling speeds and/or employing post-spin stretching. Stretching in combination with optimized spinning conditions results in fibers with a strength of >250 MPa, which is the ...
Aqueous Processing and Fiber Spinning of Recombinant Spider Silks
Macromolecules, 2002
Spiders have captured the interest of scientists for many years because spider silks are among the toughest materials, having properties that surpass some man-made synthetic materials. Spinning recombinant silk to duplicate those properties has proved to be extremely difficult. This is the first known report of spinning recombinant silk fibers in an aqueous environment. The method seeks to keep the protein soluble throughout the process, not unlike the way the spider stores and spins silk. Recombinant silk proteins were produced by bacterial fermentation in which the cell pellets were lyophilized and lysed with organic acid. Silk protein was purified from the lysate by chromatography and processed in dilute denaturing buffer into a fiber spinning solution. Circular dichroism measurements of the silk solutions revealed an increase in-sheet content as a function of time. Time-dependent selfassociation of silk protein was monitored in solution by dynamic light scattering. Furthermore, the observed increase in-sheet content and self-association appear to be required for fiber formation. Recombinant silk fibers were 10-60 µm in diameter, water insoluble, and birefringent, indicating molecular orientation within the fiber.
Spider Silk: Structure and application
International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications (IJSRP), 2020
the nature is full of mysteries and engages the full minded persons and scholars to itself throughout the world, the nature presents these mysteries on a wide variety of events and inside the complex world of different creatures. There are millions of creatures that have individually strange characteristics and life condition. There are things that are in-depth scientific and debate-raising facts with these creatures which most of them are hidden and need to be discovered. Spider silk and webs are one of this mysteries. Due to low rate of degradability, toughness, elasticity and biosynthetic characteristics, the spider silk evaluated to have many scientific uses and application. Hence here in this paper, I a bit more want to discuss on spider silk uses and application on some of life-related matters. And a bit on its structure and specifications.
Review Protein families, natural history and biotechnological aspects of spider silk
Genetics and Molecular Research, 2012
Spiders are exceptionally diverse and abundant organisms in terrestrial ecosystems and their evolutionary success is certainly related to their capacity to produce different types of silks during their life cycle, making a specialized use on each of them. Presenting particularly tandemly arranged amino acid repeats, silk proteins (spidroins) have mechanical properties superior to most synthetic or natural high-performance fibers, which makes them very promising for biotechnology industry, with putative applications in the production of new biomaterials. During the evolution of spider species, complex behaviors of web production and usage have been coupled with anatomical specialization of spinning glands. Spiders retaining ancestral characters, such as the ones belonging to the Mygalomorph group, present simpler sorts of webs used mainly to build burrows and egg sacs, and their silks are produced by globular undifferentiated spinning glands. In contrast, Araneomorphae spiders have a complex spinning apparatus, presenting up to seven morphologically distinct glands, capable to Review ©FUNPEC-RP www.funpecrp.com.br Genetics and Molecular Research 11 (3): 2360-2380 (2012) Protein family, history and biotechnology of spider silk produce a more complex set of silk polymers with different degrees of rigidness and elasticity associated with distinct behaviors. Aiming to provide a discussion involving a number of spider silks' biological aspects, in this review we present descriptions of members from each family of spidroin identified from five spider species of the Brazilian biodiversity, and an evolutionary study of them in correlation with the anatomical specialization of glands and spider's spinning behaviors. Due to the biotechnological importance of spider silks for the production of new biomaterials, we also discuss about the new possible technical and biomedical applications of spider silks and the current status of it.
Bioinspired Fibers Follow the Track of Natural Spider Silk
Macromolecules, 2011
The mechanical behavior and microstructure of bioinspired fibers spun from solutions of recombinant spidroin-like proteins were extensively characterized, and compared with those of natural spider silk fibers. It is confirmed that high performance bioinspired fibers indistinguishable from natural spider silk up to large strains can be produced through genetic engineering and conventional spinning technologies. It is also found that fibers spun from spidroin-like proteins that contain different motifs of sequence exhibit variations in their microstructure in terms of crystallinity and chain alignment, but these differences are not reflected in distinct tensile properties. This similarity in terms of their mechanical behavior indicates that bioinspired fibers are largely independent of their exact sequence of recombinant proteins and, in particular, of their proline content. Finally, it is shown that the largest differences between natural and bioinspired fibers are found at very large deformations, marking the ultimate challenge in the synthesis of silk-like fibers.