The new artificial spider silk is stronger and cheaper than natural and can be used in medical textiles.

The reference media reported on January 11 that foreign media said that an international team of scientists has developed a method for producing new artificial spider silk. This bionic product is stronger and cheaper than natural spider silk, and can be applied to many fields such as medicine and textiles. field.

According to the Effie Madrid report on January 9, the study published in the British journal Nature Chemical Biology on January 9 was led by Jan Johansson and Anna Risin of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The University of Madrid's Technical University of Spain and scientists from China and the United Kingdom participated.

Gustavo Prassa, a researcher at the Technical University of Madrid, said: "Spider silk is a biodegradable material that has extraordinary energy absorption capacity during deformation to fracture and is also a good biocompatibility. The material. Therefore, spider silk has many uses."

However, natural spider silk is an extremely expensive material, so the commercial use value is not high.

Prassa said: "From 2009 to 2012, after years of hard work, scientists finally succeeded in weaving two pieces of clothing based on spider silk in Madagascar. Currently, these two pieces are in London and Exhibited in a museum in New York."

In order to obtain artificial spider silk similar to the natural spider silk composition, scientists have made great efforts. Over the past 10 years, scientists have developed recombinant proteins with similar properties to spider silk. However, the use of such recombinant protein textile fibers typically requires the use of solvating agents or coagulants which are toxic in some cases, which poses a barrier to the biomedical application of artificial spider silk.

Prassa also pointed out that the artificial spider silks that have been obtained so far are not as good as the natural spider silk, which also hinders commercial use.

The main component of spider silk is a large amount of protein. A variety of glands in the abdomen of the spider are responsible for the secretion of silk proteins, which contain highly concentrated solutions. The solution passes through a narrow channel where the acidity is altered, increasing the concentration and the spider silk becomes an insoluble fiber.

Inspired by the way spiders secrete spider silk, Jan Johansson, Anna Risin and their peers have developed a mixed protein that contains the amino acid sequences of spider silks found in two different types of spiders. This method achieves the purpose of controlling protein aggregation, thereby mimicking the natural process of spider silking.

In addition, scientists have developed a silking method that controls the acidity of protein solutions to create artificial spider silk that is close to natural spider silk and can be deformed. The researchers emphasized that this method uses only water solvents that change the pH, so this man-made material does not pose biocompatibility problems.

The degradable artificial spider silk obtained by this method is more economical and cheaper, and is more readily available, and can be used for mass production of lightweight materials for advanced biological materials and medical equipment.