Development of Synthetic Spider Silk Fibers for High Performance Applications

Abstract

The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of synthetic production of high-performance spider silk fibers for use in next-generation automotives, aerospace, body and vehicle armor, ropes, webbing, and advanced composites. This requires creating a system for producing the protein-based material with sufficient efficiency that, scaled up, would be commercially viable. Using cutting edge techniques in synthetic biology (e.g. gene design and synthesis), we created multiple type and multiple size silk sequences for maximum expression in a scalable, high expression recombinant organism. We created laboratory scale quantities of silk protein feedstock to determine the feasibility of synthetic spider silk production for commercial uses.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 08, 2013
Accession Number
ADA598372

Entities

People

  • David N. Breslauer

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Alcohols
  • Algorithms
  • Biology
  • Cells
  • Chemistry
  • Engineering
  • Fiber Spinning
  • Fibers
  • Fungi
  • Materials
  • Materials Processing
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Molecular Weight
  • Physical Properties
  • Production
  • Spiders
  • Synthetic Biology

Readers

  • Molecular Genetics
  • Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry
  • Reinforced Composite Materials

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology
  • Space