Researchers Produce Artificial Spider Silk by Mimicking the Procedure of Spiders
Researchers from the Centre for Biomedical Technology at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid were involved in this research project that was recently published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. The results of the study show the first procedure to produce artificial spider silk by imitating the natural procedure of spiders. This imitation was obtained by developing recombinant proteins with the same water solubility that the natural silk and a spinning system based on, as it is occurs in the spider glands, aqueous solutions, stress generated during the spinning and pH reduction.
The production of fibers that equal or improve the excellent properties of spider silk is a breakthrough, since other previous works only used aqueous solutions. Researchers shown that is possible to produce kilometers of fibers with mechanical properties that are similar to the spider silk. This material has great applications in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, among others.
These characteristics make spider silk an excellent candidate as biomaterials in tissue engineering. However, unlike what happens in the case of worm silks, spider silk had not been produced at industrial scale before since spiders are solitary and predatory animals what makes it difficult their grow in captivity.
Formation of artificial spider silk in an acidic aqueous buffer collection bath.
Credit: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
The gradient regulation affects specific parts of the spider silk proteins and as a result, the fiber is rapidly formed at a particular location in the production apparatus. This help design an artificial spider silk protein that includes amino acid sequences of the spidroins of two different species. This chimeric protein has been shown to be as water soluble as the natural spider silk proteins, this allows researchers to produce large quantities of silk using bacteria. Thus, the production of artificial spider silk is scalable, and consequently interesting for the industry.
Artificial spider silk reeled onto a rotating frame in air. /
Credit:Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
According to the researchers, “This is the first successful example of biomimetic spider silk spinning. We have designed a process that recapitulates many of the complex molecular mechanisms of native silk spinning. In the future this may allow industrial production of artificial spider silk for biomaterial applications or for the manufacture of advanced textiles”.
Contacts and sources:
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Citation: Biomimetic spinning of artificial spider silk from a chimeric minispidroin. Marlene Andersson, Qiupin Jia, Ana Abella, Xiau-Yeen Lee, Michael Landreh, Pasi Purhonen, Hans Hebert, Maria Tenje, Carol V Robinson, Qing Meng, Gustavo R Plaza, Jan Johansson, Anna Rising. Nature Chemical Biology (2017) doi:10.1038/nchembio.2269
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/01/researchers-produce-artificial-spider.html
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