Structures of silk fibroin before and after spinning and biomedical applications

Abstract

Silkworms produce silk fibroin fiber from an aqueous silk fibroin solution by applying shear stress within the spinneret at ambient temperature. Here the structures of silk fibroin before and after spinning determined by solution and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. The solution structure was determined by using native liquid silk extracted from silkworm larvae and the lamellar structure of fibroin after spinning was determined. Moreover, a silk-based small diameter vascular graft was developed by electrospinning. These studies provide a perspective for investigations of energy-conserving fiber processing techniques and silk-based biomedical materials.