Customized Flagelliform Spidroins Form Spider Silk-like Fibers at pH 8.0 with Outstanding Tensile Strength

ACS BIOMATERIALS SCIENCE & ENGINEERING(2022)

Cited 7|Views10
No score
Abstract
Spider flagelliform silk shows the best extensibility among various types of silk, but its biomimetic preparation has not been much studied. Herein, five customized flagelliform spidroins (FlSps: S and NTDFl-Sn-CTDFl, n = 1-4), in which the repetitive region (S) and N-/C- terminal domains (NTDFl and CTDFl) are from the same spidroin and spider species, were produced recombinantly. The recombinant spidroins with terminal domains were able to form silk-like fibers with diameters of similar to 5 mu m by manual pulling at pH 8.0, where the secondary structure transformation occurred. The silk-like fibers from NTDFl-S4-CTDFl showed the highest tensile strength (similar to 250 MPa), while those ones with 1-3 S broke at a similar stress (similar to 180 MPa), suggesting that increasing the amounts of the repetitive region can improve the tensile strength, but a certain threshold might need to be reached. This study shows successful preparation of flagelliform silk-like fibers with good mechanical properties, providing general insights into efficient biomimetic preparations of spider silks.
More
Translated text
Key words
flagelliform, customized FlSp, silk formation at pH 8.0, manual pulling, mechanical properties
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined