Polymeric amyloid fibre is as strong as steel and spider silk
Engineers have designed amyloid silk hybrid proteins and produced them in engineered bacteria to form fibres that are stronger than some natural spider silks.
The artificial silk - dubbed polymeric amyloid fibre - was produced by bacteria that were genetically engineered in the lab of Fuzhong Zhang, a professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. The research has been published in ACS Nano.
In 2018 Zhang’s lab engineered bacteria that produced a recombinant spider silk with performance comparable with its natural counterparts.
"After our previous work, I wondered if we could create something better than spider silk using our synthetic biology platform," Zhang said in a statement.
The research team, which includes first author Jingyao Li, a PhD student in Zhang's lab, modified the amino acid sequence of spider silk proteins to introduce new properties, while keeping some of the attractive features of arachnid silk.
A problem associated with recombinant spider silk fibre -- without significant modification from natural spider silk sequence -- is the need to create β-nanocrystals, a main component of natural spider silk, which contributes to its strength.
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