Comparison of structures of luminescent silkworm silk prepared by feeding and dyeing

Toward Spinning Greener Advanced Silk Fibers by Feeding Silkworms with Nanomaterials

“…Moreover, they involve complex multistep processes that tend to be time consuming and require exhaustive optimization. In addition, they can interfere with SFs intrinsic properties, and the produced functionality presents decreased stability over time as the interaction between silk and the functional components is not very strong. , …”

“…This approach is a greener method of producing functionalized silk because it improves the reuse of resources such as water and energy while preventing the use of additional chemicals associated with the post-treatments of silk. The added functional materials can be more efficiently incorporated in SFs due to stronger interactions with SFs and do not significantly interfere with silk intrinsic properties. − Furthermore, the feeding strategy enables the large-scale production of high-performance multifunctional SFs with lower costs. , …”

“…The first successful reported studies were on the incorporation of dyes in the silkworm diet. ,,− Recently, the incorporation of nanomaterials has gained an enormous interest due to the potential application of the produced SFs in the biomedical and technological fields. Different types of nanomaterials were fed to silkworms.…”

“…In addition, they can interfere with SFs intrinsic properties, and the produced functionality presents decreased stability over time as the interaction between silk and the functional components is not very strong. 4,25 Recently, feeding silkworms with modified diets containing nanomaterials to produce functionalized SFs has emerged as an alternative method to the postfunctionalization approach (Figure 2). Here, silkworm larvae, from the third or fifth instar, are fed with mulberry leaves containing a nanomaterial solution or powder.…”

Direct in Vivo Functionalizing Silkworm Fibroin via Molecular Recognition

“…To achieve this goal, currently three major routes are developed in fabrication of silk fiber with luminesce, e.g., genetic modification, post treatment, and modified diets . However, genetic modification is rather restricted in functionalizing, the post treatment is usually conducted under harsh conditions, and the modification is always unstable due to the lack of strong interactions between protein and fluorescent dyes . Compared with the previous two approaches, feeding silkworms on functionally modified diets is nontoxic, greener, more convenient, and economic on massive production of silk fibroin-based functional biomaterials.…”