Earth & Sky

Nanotech silk plus shell for bone repair

Spider silk, made of complex protein molecules, has a tensile strength comparable to that of high-grade steel. It also can stretch up to 40% of its length without breaking.

Researchers at Tufts University have developed new materials with the flexibility and strength of spider silk and the intricate structure of tiny marine diatoms.

David Kaplan: So, the basic concept was to combine a series of novel materials that exist in nature.

That’s David Kaplan at Tufts. He and his team cloned silk proteins from the webs of golden silk spiders and fused them with proteins that build the shells of marine diatoms. In the lab, the engineered protein – part spider silk and part glassy shell – can build itself, crystal upon crystal.

These scientists used nanotechnology – the science of the very small – to engine these new materials, which Kaplan said could potentially be used for growing bone or tooth tissue. We asked Dr. Kaplan how he came up with the idea.

David Kaplan: Generally, if you look at biological systems and interfaces in biology, they are really structured at the molecular and nanoscale to optimize how a material is going to function. And so, to us it’s very important to mimic, or emulate that kind of design principle, if you’re going to really achieve some of the remarkable mechanical and functional features that you see throughout nature.

Kaplan added that it’ll be several years before these nanomaterials are used in the human body.

Thanks to the National Science Foundation.

Written by Jorge Salazar