近日，科研人员在国际权威杂志PNAS上发表论文"Silkworms transformed with chimeric silkworm/spider silk genes spin composite silk fibers with improved mechanical properties"称，他们已经培育出了一种能吐出含有蜘蛛丝蛋白的坚韧的纤维的蚕。
蜘蛛丝纤维比蚕吐出的丝的弹性和伸展性更好，这让蜘蛛丝适合用于一系列的医学应用，诸如外科手术缝合伤口。但是蜘蛛的领地习性和同类相食为饲养蜘蛛来制造蛛丝提出了挑战。
Donald Jarvis及其同事培育了转基因蚕，它们表达促进了丝的弹性和抗张强度的基因序列，让这些蚕吐出含有蜘蛛丝蛋白的合成纤维。
长久以来，人们用转基因细菌、酵母、植物、昆虫和哺乳动物细胞制造出了蜘蛛丝蛋白，但是使用蚕制造蜘蛛丝消除了对制造后的纺织技术的需求。
此前把蜘蛛丝蛋白放进蚕吐的丝纤维中的尝试的结果是相对较低的产量和这种嵌合蛋白与丝纤维的结合不稳定。相比之下，这组作者报告说，他们的这种改造技术带来了嵌合蛋白稳定结合的纤维。
结果，这种复合丝蛋白至少和蜘蛛牵引丝蛋白一样坚韧，而且平均起来比蚕吐的纤维更坚韧。因此，这组作者说蚕可能成为制造含有蜘蛛丝蛋白的坚韧的丝纤维的工厂。（生物谷bioon.com）
doi:10.1073/pnas.1109420109
PMC:
PMID:
Silkworms transformed with chimeric silkworm/spider silk genes spin composite silk fibers with improved mechanical properties
Florence Teuléa , Yun-Gen Miaob, Bong-Hee Sohnc, Young-Soo Kimc, Donald L. Jarvisa
The development of a spider silk-manufacturing process is of great interest. However, there are serious problems with natural manufacturing through spider farming, and standard recombinant protein production platforms have provided limited progress due to their inability to assemble spider silk proteins into fibers. Thus, we used piggyBac vectors to create transgenic silkworms encoding chimeric silkworm/spider silk proteins. The silk fibers produced by these animals were composite materials that included chimeric silkworm/spider silk proteins integrated in an extremely stable manner. Furthermore, these composite fibers were, on average, tougher than the parental silkworm silk fibers and as tough as native dragline spider silk fibers. These results demonstrate that silkworms can be engineered to manufacture composite silk fibers containing stably integrated spider silk protein sequences, which significantly improve the overall mechanical properties of the parental silkworm silk fibers.
