Silks are biodegradable, biocompatible, self-assembling proteins that can also be tailored via genetic engineering to contain specific chemical features, offering utility for drug and gene delivery. Silkworm silk has been used in biomedical sutures for decades and has recently achieved Food and Drug Administration approval for expanded biomaterials device utility. With the diversity and control...

This study investigates the feasibility of recombinant spider silk protein as a wound-dressing material for coverage of deep second-degree burn wounds using an animal model. Sixty Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were randomly divided into four groups (15 rats in each group). Two types of recombinant spider silk proteins, pNSR-16 and pNSR-32, as well as collagen (as a control) were applied on the wound...

Silk fibroin protein has been reinvented as a new optical material for biophotonic applications because of its optical transparency, biocompatibility, and easy fabrication process. It is used in various silk-based optical devices, which makes it desirable to investigate the optical properties of silk from diverse perspectives. This paper presents our investigation of the optical properties of s...

Antheraea mylitta is one of the wild nonmulberry silkworms, which produces tasar silk. An EST project has been undertaken to understand the gene expression profile of A. mylitta silk gland. Two cDNA libraries, one from the whole bodies of one-day-old larvae and the other from the silkglands of fifth instar larvae, were constructed and sequenced. A total of 2476 good-quality ESTs (1239 clones) w...

Stem cell-based tissue engineering shows promise for bone regeneration and requires artificial microenvironments to enhance the survival, proliferation and differentiation of the seeded cells. Silk fibroin, as a natural protein polymer, has unique properties for tissue regeneration. The present study aimed to evaluate the influence of porous silk scaffolds on rat bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) ...

Correlated evolution of traits can act synergistically to facilitate organism function. But, what happens when constraints exist on the evolvability of some traits, but not others? The orb web was a key innovation in the origin of >12,000 species of spiders. Orb evolution hinged upon the origin of novel spinning behaviors and innovations in silk material properties. In particular, a new major a...

The transcriptional coactivator Yorkie(Yki), is a critical downstream effector of the Hippo(Hpo) signaling pathway that controls organ size through the regulation of cell proliferation and apoptosis. During the past ten years the biological function of Yki has been studied extensively in Drosophila and a few other insects, however, little is known about it in the silkworm, Bombyx mori, a major ...

This work explores functional, fundamental and applied aspects of naturally harvested spider silk fibers. Natural silk is a protein polymer where different amino acids control the physical properties of fibroin bundles, producing, for example, combinations of β-sheet (crystalline) and amorphous (helical) structural regions. This complexity presents opportunities for functional modification to o...

Spider silk is protein fibers with extraordinary mechanical properties. Up to now, it is still poorly understood how silk proteins are kept in a soluble form before spinning into fibers and how the protein molecules are aligned orderly to form fibers. Minor ampullate spidroin is one of the seven types of silk proteins, which consists of four types of domains: N-terminal domain, C-terminal domai...

In this study, we analyzed the impact of dyeing and digital printing processes linen/silk fabric (70% linen/30% silk) on its color fastness shrinkage in directions warp weft. This is a highly relevant topic because single combines two natural fibers different origins—silk, protein, animal-based, whereas linen derived from cellulose is, thus, plant-based. Therefore, natures determine distinctive...