Spider silk is one of the strongest substances known to man, known for its extremely high tensile strength, elasticity, and light weight. It could be used in countless industry applications, but it can’t be harvested on a significant scale due to its minute size, so scientists have been researching ways to produce synthetic spider silk instead. For years, researchers have struggled with maintaining the impressive attributes like strength and size of natural silk in their homemade replicas, but in 2018, researchers at University of Washington in St. Louis made a breakthrough.

Their research confirmed that the size of the spider silk proteins are positively correlated with their strength, which is consistent with other studies. Until this point, however, nobody was able to make proteins large enough to rival natural silk. To make the protein as large as possible, they used the DNA sequence spiders express to produce their silk in nature, and repeated it several times to increase the length of the gene, and therefore the size of the protein. 

However, the length of the sequence proved to be its own problem. These researchers were using genetically engineered bacteria to synthesize spider silk from their custom gene, but the sheer length of the sequence prevented them from producing the full protein, as bacteria chop long chains into smaller segments. To work around this obstacle, the team added a short gene to the segment that facilitates a reaction to bind all of the smaller segments together, resulting in a spider silk protein longer than any other synthetic attempt. Their final product wound up being 556 kDa long, far greater than the next-longest engineered spider silk at 285 kDa, and matches the strength and elasticity of natural silk. 

The lab that conducted this research intends to use its breakthrough to “replace some of the myriad of petroleum-based synthetic fibers,” along with refining the process to make it easier and less resource-intensive. Their work suggests that making the proteins even longer would further improve their strength, so there are certainly many avenues of advancement for this incredible material.

Wednesday was rough for me. It was hard to imagine what the next four years are going to look like, and how they’ll influence the future after that. With the promises our next President is making, I can only hope that four more years will mark the end of his second term. I am truly scared.

After eight hours of back-to-back classes, I needed to eat and start my tutoring session. I always do coursework as I’m waiting for students to drop in, but I knew my compounding stress from the day (and my anxiety about technical issues regarding my Honors project) would prevent me from focusing on studying. Instead, I thought about my upcoming Zoology exam and how I’d watched an episode of Wild Kratts featuring a member of subphylum chelicerata when I was a kid. Sat with a blanket and a bowl of ramen, I rewatched an episode of a kids’ show under the guise of studying for an exam. Yeah, maybe it doesn’t qualify, but it helped me stop thinking about the future for a minute and instead readjust my focus to the applications of synthetic spider silk. 

Anyways, I really enjoyed this week’s subject, and it was really cool to see more applications of genetic engineering. I would definitely be interested in contributing to research like this! Writing these articles keeps me thinking about the limitless potential of biotechnology, and fuels my passion for the field. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned to learn with me!

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180821094234.htm#google_vignette