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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Designing New Biomaterials: Modifying A Spider Silk Gene For Efficient Bacterial Expression For Industrial Production, Tanner J. Hancock, Nathan A. Payne, Travis Hotchkiss, Fernando A. Agarraberes, Randolph V. Lewis
Designing New Biomaterials: Modifying A Spider Silk Gene For Efficient Bacterial Expression For Industrial Production, Tanner J. Hancock, Nathan A. Payne, Travis Hotchkiss, Fernando A. Agarraberes, Randolph V. Lewis
Biology Posters
Spider silks have remarkable physical properties due to a combination of strength and elasticity. In addition, spider silks are biocompatible and biodegradable. Our laboratory has shown that the strength of products, such as fibers, produced with other silk proteins correlates with the size of the silk protein. The aciniform silk protein (AcSp1), has been shown to produce the thinnest and strongest fibers of all the natural spider silks. Aciniform silk is composed of a nonrepetitive amino-terminal region, 14 repeats of approximately 200 amino acids each, and a nonrepetitive carboxy-terminal region. We have been able to produce different variants of this …