Abstract

Efficient production of artificial spider silk fibers with properties that match its natural counterpart has still not been achieved. Recently, a biomimetic process for spinning recombinant spider silk proteins (spidroins) was presented, in which important molecular mechanisms involved in native spider silk spinning were recapitulated. However, drawbacks of these fibers included inferior mechanical properties and problems with low resistance to aqueous environments. In this work, we show that >= 5 h incubation of the fibers, in a collection bath of 500 mM NaAc and 200 mM NaCl, at pH 5 results in fibers that do not dissolve in water or phosphate buffered saline, which implies that the fibers can be used for applications that involve wet/humid conditions. Furthermore, incubation in the collection bath improved the strain at break and was associated with increased beta-sheet content, but did not affect the fiber morphology. In summary, we present a simple way to improve artificial spider silk fiber strain at break and resistance to aqueous solvents.

Keywords

fiber; tensile testing; mechanical properties; spinning

Published in

Molecules (Basel, Switzerland)
2020, Volume: 25, number: 14, article number: 3248
Publisher: MDPI

SLU Authors

• Rising, Anna

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Karolinska Institute

UKÄ Subject classification

Polymer Chemistry


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules25143248

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/107201