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。除了具有显著的拉伸强度外，它还具有生物相容性，这使得它成为生物工程和医学应用的有趣候选者。由于这一点，以及由于蜘蛛的同类相食性质而导致的养殖蜘蛛的相对困难，许多兴趣集中在合成蜘蛛丝的重组生产上。重组丝蛋白设计的优化不仅依赖于我们对转录内容的理解，还依赖于对天然丝蛋白的翻译和组装的理解。了解这些过程中的每一个的重要性将允许一个合理的设计方法重组丝。该项目旨在揭示蜘蛛丝基因的复杂遗传调控，并利用这些信息来创造合成丝蛋白。

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.