Stronger than steel and more elastic than rubber, spider silk would be an ideal material for a large variety of medical and technical applications if it could be mass produced.
Now a team led by Thomas Scheibel at the Technical University of Munich has successfully used genetic engineering to produce one of the spider silk proteins of the European garden spider.
While purifying the protein by dialysis, the researchers observed the separation of two different fluid phases -- one phase consisted of protein dimers, the second consisted of oligomers, multiple protein units linked together.
After the addition of potassium phosphate, a natural initiator of silk aggregation, the liquid could be pulled into threads.
"It is clearly not a structural change in the protein but rather the degree of oligomerization that is crucial for thread formation," said Scheibel. "Our insights form a foundation for the establishment of an effective spinning process for the production (of) genetically engineered spider silk."
The study is reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
No comments:
Post a Comment