In planta production of ELPylated spidroin-based proteins results in non-cytotoxic biopolymers.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Spider silk is a tear-resistant and elastic biopolymer that has outstanding mechanical properties. Additionally, exiguous immunogenicity is anticipated for spider silks. Therefore, spider silk represents a potential ideal biomaterial for medical applications. All known spider silk proteins, so-called spidroins, reveal a composite nature of silk-specific units, allowing the recombinant production of individual and combined segments.

Results

In this report, a miniaturized spidroin gene, named VSO1 that contains repetitive motifs of MaSp1 has been synthesized and combined to form multimers of distinct lengths, which were heterologously expressed as elastin-like peptide (ELP) fusion proteins in tobacco. The elastic penetration moduli of layered proteins were analyzed

SUBMITTER: Hauptmann V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4343268 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature