Over the past 30 years, silk has been proposed for numerous biomedical applications that go beyond its traditional use as a suture material. Silk sutures are well tolerated in humans, but the use of silk for vascular engineering applications still requires extensive biocompatibility testing. Some studies have indicated a need to modify silk to yield a hemocompatible surface. This study examined...

Nature has evolved a range of materials that compete with man-made materials in physical properties; one of these is spider silk. Silk is a fibrous material that exhibits extremely high strength and toughness with regard to its low density. In this review we discuss the molecular structure of spider silk and how this understanding has allowed the development of recombinant silk proteins that mi...

Understanding the compatibility between spider silk and conducting materials is essential to advance the use of spider silk in electronic applications. Spider silk is tough, but becomes soft when exposed to water. Here we report a strong affinity of amine-functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes for spider silk, with coating assisted by a water and mechanical shear method. The nanotubes adh...

Spider silk has been studied recently because of its tremendous strength and flexibility [1]. Biotechnology now opens possibilities for the application of spider silk [2–7]. We describe a new avenue for the application of spider silk in textile science and industry. Recently, spider silk/carbon nanotube composites have been prepared, and their mechanical and electrical properties characterized....

Neutron reflectivity (NR) measurements of ultrathin surface films (below 30 nm) composed of Bombyx mori silk fibroin protein in combination with atomic force microscopy and ellipsometry were used to reveal the internal structural organization in both dry and swollen states. Reconstituted aqueous silk solution deposited on a silicon substrate using the spin-assisted layer-by-layer (SA-LbL) tec...

Over the past 30 years, silk has been proposed for numerous biomedical applications that go beyond its traditional use as a suture material. Silk sutures are well tolerated in humans, but the use of silk for vascular engineering applications still requires extensive biocompatibility testing. Some studies have indicated a need to modify silk to yield a hemocompatible surface. This study examined...

A combination of solid state 1H NMR chemical shift measurements and empirical chemical shift calculations has been used to interpret 1H solid state chemical shifts of a model peptide (Ala-Gly)15 for the crystalline domain of Bombyx mori silk fibroin in silk I and silk II structures, including a treatment of both intra- and intermolecular arrangements. Silk I and silk II are the structures of si...

Silk suture material is primarily composed of silk fibroin and regarded as a non-resorbable material. It is slowly degraded by proteolysis when it is implanted into the body. 4-Hexylresorcinol (4HR) is a well-known antiseptic. In this study, the biodegradability of 4HR-incorporated silk sutures were compared to that of untreated silk sutures and polyglactin 910 sutures, a commercially available...

Silk fibroin from the silkworm, Bombyx mori, has excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradation, non-toxicity, adsorption properties, etc. As a kind of ideal biomaterial, silk fibroin has been widely used since it was first utilized for sutures a long time ago. The degradation behavior of silk biomaterials is obviously important for medical applications. This article will focus o...