Biological materials often exceed the characteristics and properties of man-made ones. One well-known example is spider silk with superior mechanical properties such as strength and toughness. During 400 million years of evolution spiders became outstanding silk producers. In contrast to insects, such as caterpillars of the mulberry moth Bombyx mori (commonly known as silkworms), spiders can produce different silks – orb web spiders even up to seven different ones. Orb web spiders can precisely control their production and application. Most spider silks are used for building the web, which reflects an optimized trap for flying prey.

Already thousands of years ago the excellent mechanical properties and low immunogenicity of spider webs have been acknowledged by men, employing them as fishing nets or as wound closure devices. During industrialization, attempts to breed spiders and to collect their silks have been intensified. However, large-scale farming of spiders has been quickly abandoned due to the territorial and cannibalistic behavior of most spiders.

In order to avoid such complication, we developed a bio-inspired system using bacteria as production hosts which produce silk proteins mimicking the natural spider silks. Besides the protein fabrication, we have developed a spinning technique to produce spider silk threads closely resembling natural silk fibers. Importantly, we can employ the bio-inspired silk proteins also in other application forms such as hydrogels, spheres or films.

Our bio-inspired approach serves as a basis for new materials in a variety of medical, biological, or chemical applications.

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