Extraordinary Mechanical Properties of Composite Silk Through Hereditable Transgenic Silkworm Expressing Recombinant Major Ampullate Spidroin.

ABSTRACT: Spider dragline silk is a remarkable material that shows excellent mechanical properties, diverse applications, biocompatibility and biodegradability. Transgenic silkworm technology was used to obtain four types of chimeric silkworm/spider (termed composite) silk fibres, including different lengths of recombinant Major ampullate Spidroin1 (re-MaSp1) or recombinant Major ampullate Spidroin2 (re-MaSp2) from the black widow spider, Latrodectus hesperus. The results showed that the overall mechanical properties of composite silk fibres improved as the re-MaSp1 chain length increased, and there were significant linear relationships between the mechanical properties and the re-MaSp1 chain length (p < 0.01). Additionally, a stronger tensile strength was observed for the composite silk fibres that

SUBMITTER: You Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6206087 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature