Premium
Spider silks from plants – a challenge to create native‐sized spidroins
Author(s) -
Hauptmann Valeska,
Weichert Nicola,
Rakhimova Marziya,
Conrad Udo
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
biotechnology journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.144
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1860-7314
pISSN - 1860-6768
DOI - 10.1002/biot.201300204
Subject(s) - spider silk , silk , spider , nanotechnology , biomedicine , biology , evolutionary biology , polymer science , materials science , bioinformatics , ecology , composite material
Silk threads from spiders exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties, such as superior toughness and elasticity. Spider silks consist of several different large repetitive proteins that act as the basic materials responsible for these outstanding features. The production of spider silk protein variants in plants opens up new horizons in the production and functional investigation that enable the use of spider silks in innovative material development, nanotechnology and biomedicine in the future. This review summarizes and discusses production of spider silk protein variants in plants, especially with regards to plant expression systems, purification strategies, and characteristics of spider silk variants. Furthermore, the challenge of producing native‐sized recombinant spidroins in planta is outlined, presenting three different strategies for achieving these high repetitive proteins with the help of non‐repetitive C‐terminal domains, crosslinking transglutaminase, and self‐linking inteins. The potential of these fascinating proteins in medicine is also highlighted.