Engineered Spider Silk Proteins for Biomimetic Spinning of Fibers with Toughness Equal to Dragline Silks (Adv. Funct. Mater. 23/2022)

Engineered Spider Silk Protein In article number 2200986, Anna Rising and co-workers present the impressive strength of spider silk fibers conferred by poly-alanines in stacked β-sheets (steric zippers in pink). By protein engineering and expression in prokaryotic hosts, they have done what spiders cannot do: increase the hydrophobicity and intermolecular interactions of the steric zippers (turquoise) thereby generating stronger artificial spider silk.