Chimeric spider silk production in microalgae: a modular bionanomaterial

The recombinant proteins, spider silk proteins and enzybiotics, will be expressed in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii strains by nuclear transformation. Each recombinant strain will express a different protein, which will contain the N- and C-terminal polymerization domains from native spider silk proteins. These domains are essential to the polymerization step and, subsequently, for production of a material very similar to silk. This material will be evaluated regarding its antimicrobial and mechanical properties, as well as the system productivity. These results may shed some light on spider silk-based immobilization support effectiveness, even for other biotechnological applications, such as the one idealized here.