Abstract
More than 400 million years of natural selection acting throughout the arthropoda has resulted in highly specialized and energetically efficient processes to produce protein-based fibers with properties that are a source of inspiration for all. As a result, for over 80 years researchers have been inspired by natural silk production in their attempts to spin artificial silks. While significant progress has been made, with fibers now regularly outperforming silkworm silks, surpassing the properties of superior silks, such as spider dragline, is still an area of considerable effort. This review provides an overview of the different approaches for artificial silk fiber spinning and compares all published fiber properties to date which has identified future trends and challenges on the road towards replicating high performance silks.
Highlights
Silks are structural proteins that are spun, on demand, into fibers for use outside the body by thousands of arthropod species.[1,2] the term “silk” is most commonly associated with textiles, the fibers unravelled from cocoons spun by the silkworm Bombyx mori.[3]
Our systematic review presents the various approaches for artificial silk fiber spinning, discusses trends in fiber properties over time, and gives possible explanations as to why a truly biomimetic spider dragline silk has not been consistently reproduced to date
We propose one of the key problems leading to difficulties in replicating the properties of the higher performing silk fibers is the use of spinning dopes that may be considered unnatural, i.e., their protein constituents differ in both structure and function compared to those of the native proteins
Summary
Silks are structural proteins that are spun, on demand, into fibers for use outside the body by thousands of arthropod species.[1,2] the term “silk” is most commonly associated with textiles, the fibers unravelled from cocoons spun by the silkworm Bombyx mori.[3]. For many years industry has been faced with the dilemma that silkworm silks are available in high quantity but lower quality, whereas spider silks yield low quantity yet very high quality Solutions to this problem may be found both through the development of new technologies improving the output and quality of recombinant and regenerated silk proteins, and the design of artificial silk spinning processes which aim to produce high performance silk-based materials in a controlled and consistent manner. Our systematic review presents the various approaches for artificial silk fiber spinning, discusses trends in fiber properties over time, and gives possible explanations as to why a truly biomimetic spider dragline silk has not been consistently reproduced to date
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