Technical and biomedical uses of nature's strongest fiber: Spider silk

Abstract

Spider silk is a biopolymer with a huge number of possible textile, technical, and biomedical applications. For several inventions prototype status could be achieved, while most ideas are still of speculative nature. This is especially true for applications which afford quantities of silk which are unrealistic to gain by traditional reeling methods but need industrial large-scale production. This could be realized by production of artificial silk fibers based on recombinant proteins. Recombinant silk production has also the advantage that genetic modifications allow for tailored proteins adapted to specific requirements. These approaches, however, are still thwarted by immense technical challenges due to the size and repetitive nature of silk proteins. Available data so far supports the notion that spider silk is highly cytocompatible and not immunogenic which renders it interesting for biomedical applications. Increasing knowledge about the molecular nature of the fibers and their particular characteristics inspires nanotechnology, e.g., microelectromechanical systems.