An international scientific team in which UPM researchers are involved has developed a bioinspired method that for the first time will allow researchers to spin artificial silk fibers as spiders do and to efficiently produce kilometers of silk.
Researchers from the Centre for Biomedical Technology at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid were involved in this research project that was recently published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. The results of the study show the first procedure to produce artificial spider silk by imitating the natural procedure of spiders. This imitation was obtained by developing recombinant proteins with the same water solubility that the natural silk and a spinning system based on, as it is occurs in the spider glands, aqueous solutions, stress generated during the spinning and pH reduction.
The production of fibers that equal or improve the excellent properties of spider silk is a breakthrough, since other previous works only used aqueous solutions. Researchers shown that is possible to produce kilometers of fibers with mechanical properties that are similar to the spider silk. This material has great applications in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, among others.
To read more, click here.