Broad Prospects for Recombinant Proteins

From science fiction films to the realities of modern synthetic biology, there are few materials that captivate the human imagination like spider silk. Despite its delicate appearance, spider silk has many mechanical properties, including strength, toughness, and elasticity. Spider silk, composed of protein fibers secreted by glands in the spiders’ abdominal region, is one of the strongest and most resilient biological materials known in the world. However, it is not feasible to produce silk by breeding spiders, so an efficient and cost effective silk production system must be established. Spider silk is mainly made up of proteins, called “spider silk protein”. With the development of synthetic biology, the production and development of recombinant spider protein became increasingly popular. Recombinant spider silk proteins have been successfully expressed in various host systems, such as E. coli, transgenic plants, yeast, insect cell lines, and mammal cell lines. Recombinant spider silk proteins are comparable in mechanical function to natural silk proteins. These expression platforms provide higher economic feasibility on an industrial scale.

Moreover, a variety of synthetic biology methods have been utilized, including bioinformatics, directed evolution, genome engineering, etc., to optimize the production of recombinant spider silk proteins or to generate novel recombinant proteins for specific functions. For example, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology was used to integrate spider silk protein gene into a silkworm genome. After the genome edits were made, the tensile strength of the chimeric fibers spun by silkworms were equivalent to that of natural spider silk.

As an expert in the field of synthetic biology, Synbio Technologies has mastered a variety of leading synthetic biology services, such as site-directed mutagenesis, mutant library construction, genome editing, and recombinant protein expression technologies. Here, we can not only provide you with customized, cost-effective molecular biology related technical services, but also offer to you a variety of quality products.

See below for more information regarding protein expression systems and recombinant protein products that we offer at Synbio Technologies.