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High-Toughness Silk Produced by a Transgenic Silkworm Expressing Spider (Araneus ventricosus) Dragline Silk Protein
Yoshihiko Kuwana,Hideki Sezutsu,Ken-ichi Nakajima,Yasushi Tamada,Katsura Kojima
Published: August 27, 2014DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105325

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Abstract
Introduction
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
Supporting Information
Acknowledgments
Author Contributions
References



Abstract

Spider dragline silk is a natural fiber that has excellent tensile properties; however, it is difficult to produce artificially as a long, strong fiber. Here, the spider (Araneus ventricosus) dragline protein gene was cloned and a transgenic silkworm was generated, that expressed the fusion protein of the fibroin heavy chain and spider dragline protein in cocoon silk. The spider silk protein content ranged from 0.37 to 0.61% w/w (1.4–2.4 mol%) native silkworm fibroin. Using a good silk-producing strain, C515, as the transgenic silkworm can make the raw silk from its cocoons for the first time. The tensile characteristics (toughness) of the raw silk improved by 53% after the introduction of spider dragline silk protein; the improvement depended on the quantity of the expressed spider dragline protein. To demonstrate the commercial feasibility for machine reeling, weaving, and sewing, we used the transgenic spider silk to weave a vest and scarf; this was the first application of spider silk fibers from transgenic silkworms.
























Citation: Kuwana Y, Sezutsu H, Nakajima K-i, Tamada Y, Kojima K (2014) High-Toughness Silk Produced by a Transgenic Silkworm Expressing Spider (Araneus ventricosus) Dragline Silk Protein. PLoS ONE 9(8): e105325. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105325

Editor: Heiner Niemann, Institute of Farm Animal Genetics, Germany

Received: March 3, 2014; Accepted: July 20, 2014; Published: August 27, 2014

Copyright: © 2014 Kuwana et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This Study was supported by MAFF Research projects of NIAS and by Research and Development Projects for Application in Promoting New Policy of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries grant from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan. (http://www.s.affrc.go.jp/docs/research_f?und2009.htm). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.


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