The development of a spider silk-manufacturing process is of great interest. However, there are serious problems with natural manufacturing through spider farming, and standard recombinant protein production platforms have provided limited progress due to their inability to assemble spider silk proteins into fibers. Thus, we used piggyBac vectors to create transgenic silkworms encoding chimeric...

This paper shows that silk fibers produced by cecropia (Hyalophora cecropia) have similar tensile properties but different amino acid composition than that of mulberry (Bombyx mori) silk. The cecropia fibers are also much finer and have better strength and modulus than tasar silk, the most common non-mulberry silk. Cecropia is one of the largest silk producing moths and has similar lifecycle to...

Spider silk research has largely focused on spidroins, proteins that are the primary components of spider silk fibers. Although a number of spidroins have been characterized, other types of proteins associated with silk synthesis are virtually unknown. Previous analyses of tissue-specific RNA-seq libraries identified 647 predicted genes that were differentially expressed in silk glands of the W...

Silk, which is obtained from the cocoon of the silkworm, is a recognized cause of occupational asthma in silk-industry workers (1). Allergic rhinitis and asthma caused by silk have also been reported in children in China, in the absence of occupational exposure (2). However, allergy to silk in clothing is rare, as silk threads to be used for fabrics are subjected to several processes that remov...

Theriodopteryx ephemeraeformis commonly known as bag worms produce ultrafine silk fibers that are remarkably different than the common domesticated (Bombyx mori) and wild (Saturniidae) silk fibers. Bag worms are considered as pests and commonly infect trees and shrubs. Although it has been known that the cocoons (bags) produced by bag worms are composed of silk, the structure and properties of ...

as the chief communication channel between eastern and western civilizations, the  silk road has played the significant role in the history of northeastern iran. the  silk road has provided a communicative way for commercial exchanges in one hand, and was in used by invader nomads in order to plunder of northeastern iran during many decades in other hand. the contacts have led to interaction be...

In the present study, a poly-l-lactide/silk fibroin (PL-SF) bilayer scaffold seeded with allogenic bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) was investigated as a potential approach for bladder tissue engineering in a model of partial bladder wall cystectomy in rabbits. The inner porous layer of the scaffold produced from silk fibroin was designed to promote cell proliferation and the outer layer produ...

The design and development of future molecular photonic/electronic systems pose the challenge of integrating functional molecular building blocks in a controlled, tunable, and reproducible manner. The modular nature and fidelity of the biosynthesis method provides a unique chemistry approach to one-pot synthesis of environmental factor-responsive chimeric proteins capable of energy conversion b...

Silk fibroin exists in a number of different states, such as silk I and silk II, with different properties largely defined by differences in secondary structure composition. Numerous attempts have been made to control the transitions from silk I to silk II in vitro to produce high-performance materials. Of all the factors influencing the structural compositions, pH and some metal ions play impo...

Aquatic caddisflies diverged from a silk-spinning ancestor shared with terrestrial moths and butterflies. Caddisfly larva spin adhesive silk underwater to construct protective shelters with adventitiously gathered materials. A repeating (SX)(n) motif conserved in the H-fibroin of several caddisfly species is densely phosphorylated. In total, more than half of the serines in caddisfly silk may b...