Biosynthesis and Applications of Silk‐like and Collagen‐like Proteins

Production of renewable polymers from crop plants

“…Dragline silks are stronger than steel, when compared on a weight basis, and have similar strength but are more elastic than Kevlar Ò (Hinman et al, 2000). Dragline spider silk sequences are composed of repeated sequence blocks of various types (Huang et al, 2007). The GPGXX (often GPGQQ) motif is thought to form a b-turn spiral, while the GGX motif probably forms a 3 10 helix.…”

“…Fibrous proteins typically contain short blocks of repeated amino acids and can be regarded as elaborate block co-polymers with unique strength-to-weight, elastic or adhesive properties (Huang et al, 2007;Sanford and Kumar, 2005;Scheibel, 2005). Well-known fibrous proteins are silk, collagen, elastin, mussel adhesive proteins, keratin, wheat glutenin and resilin (Kiick, 2007).…”

“…The properties of silk fibers depend to a large extent on correct assembly of the different types of proteins by spinning. In the spider or silkworm glands, silk proteins are maintained at a concentration of 30% without precipitation or aggregation, and are spun together via an elaborate liquid spinning process, which has not been reproduced in the laboratory (Huang et al, 2007). Recombinant spider silk obtained from mammalian cells has been spun into filaments that show similar toughness to dragline silk but with a lower tenacity (Lazaris et al, 2002).…”

Peptide-based biopolymers in biomedicine and biotechnology

“…Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial that is lightweight, extremely strong and elastic, and has excellent impact resistance. Silks from the silkworm Bombyx mori and the orb-weaving spider Nephila clavipes have been investigated to understand their structure and processing mechanisms and to exploit the properties of these proteins for use as biomaterials [45,46]. These native silk proteins contain highly repetitive crystalline domains periodically interrupted by less crystalline or amorphous regions.…”

Evolving soft robotic locomotion in PhysX

“…To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. advances in materials such as polymers [2], and nanocomposites [1] such a "soft robot" is becoming an increasing possibility. This ability to significantly deform and alter shape, at a much higher level of detail than discrete "modular" robots (such as Yim's Polybot [6] and Rus's Molecubes [3]) makes accessable new and increasingly important environments such as mine fields and collapsed buildings.…”