Spider Silk Gut: Development and Characterization of a Novel Strong Spider Silk Fiber

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2014 Dec 6

PMID 25475975

Citations 6

Authors

Ping Jiang

Nuria Mari-Buye

Rodrigo Madurga

Maria Arroyo-Hernandez

Concepcion Solanas

Alfonso Ganan

Rafael Daza

Gustavo R Plaza

Gustavo V Guinea

Manuel Elices

Jose Luis Cenis

Jose Perez-Rigueiro

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Spider silk fibers were produced through an alternative processing route that differs widely from natural spinning. The process follows a procedure traditionally used to obtain fibers directly from the glands of silkworms and requires exposure to an acid environment and subsequent stretching. The microstructure and mechanical behavior of the so-called spider silk gut fibers can be tailored to concur with those observed in naturally spun spider silk, except for effects related with the much larger cross-sectional area of the former. In particular spider silk gut has a proper ground state to which the material can revert independently from its previous loading history by supercontraction. A larger cross-sectional area implies that spider silk gut outperforms the natural material in terms of the loads that the fiber can sustain. This property suggests that it could substitute conventional spider silk fibers in some intended uses, such as sutures and scaffolds in tissue engineering.

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