Fascination Technology Artificial Spider Silk As Super Fibers for Textiles

In our "Fascination Technology" section, we present impressive projects from research and development to engineers every week. Today: artificial spider silk as an alternative to conventional synthetic fibers.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) have developed artificial spider silk in larger quantities using a sticky mussel foot protein. This discovery could be of great interest to the textile industry and other fields in the distant future, providing an alternative to conventional synthetic fibers.

Spider silk is characterized by its exceptional strength and elasticity. Relative to its weight, it is even five times stronger than steel while being significantly more flexible. These properties make it an attractive material for numerous applications, such as in medicine for wound dressings or sutures. However, a prerequisite is that the valuable silk is available in sufficient quantities. Unlike silkworms, spiders cannot be bred in large numbers.

A team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis took on the challenge and succeeded in producing artificial spider silk in the lab in 2018. To achieve this, the scientists integrated the genetic blueprint of silk proteins into bacteria, which then produced the base material for the fibers. However, one problem remained: the small quantity of material obtained. This was due to the limited ability of the bacteria to produce very long-chain proteins, which are the basis of the outstanding properties of natural spider silk.

Sticky Mussel Protein Leads to Breakthrough

In the meantime, the team has also successfully overcome this challenge. Their idea was for the bacteria to produce smaller silk protein fragments, which could then be linked together. A sticky protein from mussels, known for its adhesive ability underwater, proved to be a game changer. The team had already previously succeeded in producing this protein in the lab using genetically modified bacteria. They discovered that mussel foot proteins exhibit strong binding forces among themselves—a property they utilized for the spider silk project. By attaching a piece of mussel foot protein to the ends of a shortened spider silk protein sequence, the shorter fusion proteins linked together. This created the base material for producing the novel spider silk fibers.

Impressive: Eight grams of fiber material could be obtained from one liter of bacterial culture—a greater yield than before. Additionally, researchers were able to demonstrate improved performance of the so-called btMSilk fibers in tests.

Replace Fiber Materials Like Nylon or Polyester in the Future

The super fiber impressively demonstrates how nature can serve as an inspiration for innovative materials. If it becomes possible in the future to produce synthetic spider silk in industrially usable quantities, it could make an important contribution to the production of high-performance bio-based materials—for example, for the textile industry—and replace fiber materials like nylon or polyester.

Smart-Factory

Access solutions for the Smart Factory - Industry 4.0