Studies of spider silk for biotechnology: From natural to synthetic fibres

蜘蛛丝具有许多对生物材料有利的特性。除了具有显著的抗拉强度外，它还具有生物相容性，这使其成为生物工程和医学应用的有趣候选者。由于这一点，以及由于同类相食的性质，饲养蜘蛛相对困难，人们的兴趣集中在重组合成蜘蛛丝的生产上。重组丝蛋白的优化设计不仅依赖于我们对转录的理解，还依赖于我们对天然丝蛋白的翻译和组装的理解。了解这些过程的重要性，将允许合理的设计方法来重组丝绸。该项目旨在揭示蜘蛛丝基因的复杂遗传调控，并利用这些信息创造合成丝蛋白。

Spider silk has many properties that are advantageous to a biomaterial. In addition to having remarkable tensile strength it is also biocompatible, which makes it an interesting candidate for both bioengineering and medical applications. Due to this, and the relative difficulty of farming spiders due to their cannibalistic nature, much interest has focussed on the recombinant production of synthetic spider silk. Optimisation of the design of recombinant silk proteins relies on our understanding not only of what is transcribed, but of translation and assembly of native silk proteins. Understanding the importance of each of these processes will allow a rational design approach to recombinant silks. This project will aim to shed light on the complex genetic regulation of spider silk genes and use this information to create synthetic silk proteins.