Natural Spider silk has excellent mechanical properties and is the most tough natural fiber known in nature. Its unparalleled high strength and high toughness make spider silk fiber have broad application prospects in the fields of national defense, military, construction, etc. However, the special properties of spider silk have always been difficult to expand to industrial production. Unlike spider silk, silk has a long history of acquisition and application and is cheap. Over the past decades, scientists have been working to explore and develop a fiber that is easy to produce and like spider silk, or to “transplant building blocks” the properties of spider silk onto silk.
Recently, , School of Life Sciences, Tianjin University, , Professor Lin Zhi's team used regenerated silk fibroprotein (RSF) to artificially spin , and prepared high-performance artificial silk with both strength and hardness that are significantly better than natural spider silk. Related results have been published in Matter (Cell Sister Publishing).
Lin Zhi is a researcher and professor at the School of Life Sciences, Tianjin University. He graduated from the Structural Biology Department of (NUS) at NUS. He has served as a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences and a senior researcher in the Department of Physiology at the National University of Singapore. His main research areas include protein structure , functional research, and bioengineering .
This time, the research paper published by Professor Lin Zhi’s team on Matter is titled “Artificial superstrong silkworm silk surpasses natural spider silks”. Inspired by artificial spinning of spider egg silk, the team obtained super strong silk fibers that surpassed spider silk through a special chemical bath to remove the sticky outer layer in ordinary silk and combined with metal ion-assisted enhancement. The tensile strength of this artificial silk fiber reaches 2.0 GPa, which is more than 70% higher than the average strength of natural spider silk , and has a high average Young's modulus of 43 GPa, which is far higher than all known natural microfilament . This work of opens a convenient and efficient way to produce high-performance rayon wire .
Artificial Silk RSF-SN
This study is the first time in that has converted cheap ordinary silk into artificial silk with ultra-high strength and toughness that surpasses natural spider silk. reverses the traditional view that silk cannot compete with spider silk in terms of mechanical properties. The method developed by the institute will provide a solid technical foundation for the large-scale production of high-performance and high-profit silk textile materials. Once the
research was reported, it attracted widespread attention. was reported by many foreign news websites (such as ScienceNews, EurekAlert!, Cosmos, TexFash, etc.) . Professor Chris Holland, materials scientist at the University of Sheffield, and silk scientist Randy Lewis, a silk scientist at Logan Utah State University, also expressed good affirmation of the work.
Prospects of the transformation of artificial silk into practical applications
As early as 2021, Professor Lin Zhi's team conducted related explorations on the composition and mechanism of spider silk through nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and materials science technology. A research paper published on on PNAS revealed the structure and silk formation mechanism of the protein TuSp2, the secondary component of spider egg sheath silk . This research provides a new direction for further designing silk protein materials with high mechanical properties, and also lays the concept and idea foundation for the development of super artificial silk this time.
Tianjin University School of Life Sciences, where Professor Lin Zhi is located, was established in 2012. For a long time, the college has focused on people's life and health, focusing on the prevention and control of major diseases. has carried out basic research that reveals the basic laws of life activities and applied research in key fields such as microbiology and immunology, structural and systems biology, nanobiotechnology , biological information and big data, etc., and has carried out basic research that reveals the basic laws of life activities and the application research in the fields of medicine, modern agriculture, etc.
College has three teaching and research units: the Institute of Structure and Molecular Biology, the Institute of Microbiology and Immunity, and the Institute of Nanobiology. The major of Biological Science is the first batch of pilot majors for the reform of the Ministry of Education's "Strengthening Basics Plan" and has been selected as the National First-Class Undergraduate Major Construction Point and the National Basic Discipline Top Student Training Program 2.0 Base .In addition, the college has the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Function and Application of Biomacromolecules and Tianjin Micronano Biomaterials and Inspection and Therapeutic Engineering Technology Center. Relying on a strong platform, the college has successively undertaken projects such as the national "863" project, "973" project, National Key R&D Program , National Natural Science Foundation of China and other projects, with frequent results, showing strong academic and scientific research capabilities.
Life Science is a cutting-edge discipline with rapid development and intersecting multidisciplinary disciplines. It is closely related to people's health, economic construction and social development. It is also regarded by the academic community of our country as one of the most influential disciplines in the world. believes that more and more day students will increase their knowledge and enrich their knowledge here, and contribute to the exploration of life sciences !
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Content source: Tianjin University official website, Tianjin University School of Life Sciences official microscope
Picture source: Tianjin University official website, Tianjin University School of Life Sciences official microscope
