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Technical and Biomedical Uses of Nature’s Strongest Fiber: Spider Silk

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Spider Ecophysiology

Abstract

Spider silk is a biopolymer with a huge number of possible textile, technical, and biomedical applications. For several inventions prototype status could be achieved, while most ideas are still of speculative nature. This is especially true for applications which afford quantities of silk which are unrealistic to gain by traditional reeling methods but need industrial large-scale production. This could be realized by production of artificial silk fibers based on recombinant proteins. Recombinant silk production has also the advantage that genetic modifications allow for tailored proteins adapted to specific requirements. These approaches, however, are still thwarted by immense technical challenges due to the size and repetitive nature of silk proteins. Available data so far supports the notion that spider silk is highly cytocompatible and not immunogenic which renders it interesting for biomedical applications. Increasing knowledge about the molecular nature of the fibers and their particular characteristics inspires nanotechnology, e.g., microelectromechanical systems.

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Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Kerstin Reimers and Jörn W. Kuhbier for the help with the manuscript and the images. We also thank Stefanie Michael for the beautiful image of a Nephila spider. We are also grateful to Cornelia Kasper and Nicholas Godley for fruitful collaboration and remarkable discussions. We apologize to all authors whose contributions to spider silk research could not be presented due to space limitations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plastic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery, Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Christina Allmeling, Christine Radtke & Peter M. Vogt

Authors
  1. Christina Allmeling
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  2. Christine Radtke
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  3. Peter M. Vogt
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Correspondence to Christina Allmeling .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstr. 6, Bern, 3012, Switzerland

    Wolfgang Nentwig

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Allmeling, C., Radtke, C., Vogt, P.M. (2013). Technical and Biomedical Uses of Nature’s Strongest Fiber: Spider Silk. In: Nentwig, W. (eds) Spider Ecophysiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33989-9_36

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