Artificial Bee Silk a Step Closer to Reality

Honeybee larvae produce silk to reinforce the wax cells in which they pupate and now CSIRO scientists have produced this silk artificially. Image courtesy of CSIRO.

From the Wire: CSIRO scientist Dr Tara Sutherland and a research team have hand-drawn fine threads of honeybee silk from a ‘soup’ of silk proteins that they had produced transgenically. As strong as threads drawn from the honeybee silk gland are, the fibres represent a significant step towards the development of coiled silk biomaterials, according to the researchers.

“It means that we can now seriously consider the uses of these biomimetic materials,” Dr Sutherland says. “We used recombinant cells of bacterium E. coli to produce the silk proteins which, under the right conditions, self-assembled into similar structures to those in honeybee silk,” she adds. “We already knew that honeybee silk fibres could be hand-drawn from the contents of the silk gland so used this knowledge to hand-draw fibres from a sufficiently concentrated and viscous mixture of the recombinant silk proteins. In fact, we had to draw them twice to produce a translucent stable fibre.”

Sutherland says numerous efforts have been made to express other invertebrate silks in transgenic systems but the complicated structure of the silk genes in other organisms means that producing silk outside silk glands is difficult.

“We had previously identified the honeybee silk genes and knew that that the silk was encoded by four small non-repetitive genes – a much simpler arrangement which made them excellent candidates for transgenic silk production.”

Possible practical uses for these silks would be tough, lightweight textiles, high-strength applications such as advanced composites for use in medical applications such as sutures, artificial tendons and ligaments.

More information on the research is available from CSIRO.

Tags: artificial bee silk, CSIRO, Tara Sutherland