Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Nat Genet. 2017 Jun;49(6):895-903. doi: 10.1038/ng.3852. Epub 2017 May 1.
Spider silks are the toughest known biological materials, yet are lightweight and virtually invisible to the human immune system, and they thus have revolutionary potential for medicine and industry. Spider silks are largely composed of spidroins, a unique family of structural proteins. To investigate spidroin genes systematically, we constructed the first genome of an orb-weaving spider: the golden orb-weaver (Nephila clavipes), which builds large webs using an extensive repertoire of silks with diverse physical properties. We cataloged 28 Nephila spidroins, representing all known orb-weaver spidroin types, and identified 394 repeated coding motif variants and higher-order repetitive cassette structures unique to specific spidroins. Characterization of spidroin expression in distinct silk gland types indicates that glands can express multiple spidroin types. We find evidence of an alternatively spliced spidroin, a spidroin expressed only in venom glands, evolutionary mechanisms for spidroin diversification, and non-spidroin genes with expression patterns that suggest roles in silk production.
蜘蛛丝是已知的最坚韧的生物材料，但重量轻且几乎对人体免疫系统不可见，因此在医学和工业领域具有革命性的潜力。蜘蛛丝主要由蜘蛛丝蛋白组成，这是一组独特的结构蛋白。为了系统地研究蜘蛛丝蛋白基因，我们构建了第一个编织蛛网蜘蛛的基因组：金蛛（Nephila clavipes），它使用具有不同物理性质的大量丝来构建大型蛛网。我们对 28 种金蛛蜘蛛丝蛋白进行了编目，代表了所有已知的编织蛛网蜘蛛丝蛋白类型，并鉴定了 394 种独特的重复编码基序变体和高阶重复盒结构。对不同丝腺类型中蜘蛛丝蛋白表达的特征分析表明，腺体可以表达多种蜘蛛丝蛋白类型。我们发现了一种剪接变体蜘蛛丝蛋白的证据，这种蜘蛛丝蛋白仅在毒腺中表达，还发现了蜘蛛丝蛋白多样化的进化机制，以及具有表达模式的非蜘蛛丝蛋白基因，这些基因可能在丝的生产中发挥作用。
