Human adipose-derived stem cells have shown chondrogenic differentiation potential in cartilage tissue engineering in combination with natural and synthetic biomaterials. In the present study, we hypothesized that porous aqueous-derived silk protein scaffolds would be suitable for chondrogenic differentiation of human adipose-derived stem cells. Human adipose-derived stem cells were cultured up...

Archaeological silk provides abundant information for studying ancient technologies and cultures. However, due to the spontaneous degradation and the damages from burial conditions, most ancient silk fibers which suffered the damages for thousands of years were turned into invisible molecular residues. For the obtained rare samples, extra care needs to be taken to accurately identify the genuin...

Bioresponsive Materials In article number 2208556, David Baker, Fiorenzo G. Omenetto, and co-workers describe how combining silk de novo protein switches enables bioresponsive materials that glow when specific toxins, hormones, or viruses are detected. These three stars indicate the presence of botulin in a food container.

β-Sheet crystals play an important role in determining the stiffness, strength, and optical properties of silk and in the exhibition of silk-type-specific functions. It is important to elucidate the structural changes that occur during the stretching of silk fibres to understand the functions of different types of fibres. Herein, we elucidate the initial crystallisation behaviour of silk molecu...

Our research program is de facto divided into two thrusts. In the molecular biology work, we have utilized published sequences of spidroin 1 and 2 genes to construct oligonucleotides which have been linked together to build repetitive gene units for protein expression studies. The structure of the protein we are using as a model is, of course, that of spider silk, in particular, the silk used f...

Silks are strong protein fibers produced by a broad array of spiders and insects. The vast majority of known silks are large, repetitive proteins assembled into extended beta-sheet structures. Honeybees, however, have found a radically different evolutionary solution to the need for a building material. The 4 fibrous proteins of honeybee silk are small ( approximately 30 kDa each) and nonrepeti...

Spider silk is a self-assembling biopolymer that outperforms many known materials in terms of its mechanical performance despite being constructed from simple and inferior building blocks. While experimental studies have shown that the molecular structure of silk has a direct influence on the stiffness, toughness, and failure strength of silk, few molecular-level analyses of the nanostructure o...

BACKGROUND Spider silk is a tear-resistant and elastic biopolymer that has outstanding mechanical properties. Additionally, exiguous immunogenicity is anticipated for spider silks. Therefore, spider silk represents a potential ideal biomaterial for medical applications. All known spider silk proteins, so-called spidroins, reveal a composite nature of silk-specific units, allowing the recombinan...

Freestanding fibrous matrices with proper protein composition and desirable mechanical properties, stability, and biocompatibility are in high demand for tissue engineering. Electrospun (E-spun) collagen-silk composite fibers are promising tissue engineering scaffolds. However, as-spun fibers are mechanically weak and unstable. In this work, we applied glutaraldehyde (GA) vapor treatment to imp...

This paper shows that silk fibers produced by cecropia (Hyalophora cecropia) have similar tensile properties but different amino acid composition than that of mulberry (Bombyx mori) silk. The cecropia fibers are also much finer and have better strength and modulus than tasar silk, the most common non-mulberry silk. Cecropia is one of the largest silk producing moths and has similar lifecycle to...