Centro NAST, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, via Della Ricerca Scientifica, 000133, Roma, Italy.
Nanoscale. 2011 Mar;3(3):870-6. doi: 10.1039/c0nr00752h. Epub 2011 Jan 7.
Spider silk shows great potential as a biomaterial: in addition to biocompatibility and biodegradability, its strength and toughness are greater than native biological fibres (e.g. collagen), with toughness exceeding that of synthetic fibres (e.g. nylon). Although the ultimate tensile strength and toughness at failure are unlikely to be limiting factors, its yield strain of 2% is insufficient, particularly for biomedical application because of the inability to mimic the complex ultrastructure of natural tissues with current tissue engineering approaches. To harness the full potential of spider silk as a biomaterial, it is therefore necessary to increase its yield strain. In this paper, we discuss the means by which the mechanical properties of spider silk, particularly the yield strain, can be optimized through structural modifications.
除了具有生物相容性和可生物降解性外，其强度和韧性均大于天然生物纤维（如胶原蛋白），韧性超过合成纤维（如尼龙）。尽管断裂时的极限拉伸强度和韧性不太可能成为限制因素，但它 2%的屈服应变不足，对于生物医学应用尤其如此，因为目前的组织工程方法无法模仿天然组织的复杂超微结构。为了充分发挥蜘蛛丝作为生物材料的潜力，因此有必要提高其屈服应变。本文讨论了通过结构修饰优化蜘蛛丝机械性能（特别是屈服应变）的方法。
