GeneCology Research Centre and School of Science and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia.
Division of Experimental Therapeutics, Columbia University, New York City, New York, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 Oct 17;13(10):e0204243. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204243. eCollection 2018.
Natural spider silk is one of the world's toughest proteinaceous materials, yet a truly biomimetic spider silk is elusive even after several decades of intense focus. In this study, Next-Generation Sequencing was utilised to produce transcriptomes of the major ampullate gland of two Australian golden orb-weavers, Nephila plumipes and Nephila pilipes, in order to identify highly expressed predicted proteins that may co-factor in the construction of the final polymer. Furthermore, proteomics was performed by liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectroscopy to analyse the natural solid silk fibre of each species to confirm highly expressed predicted proteins within the silk gland are present in the final silk product. We assembled the silk gland transcriptomes of N. plumipes and N. pilipes into 69,812 and 70,123 contigs, respectively. Gene expression analysis revealed that silk gene sequences were among the most highly expressed and we were able to procure silk sequences from both species in excess of 1,300 amino acids. However, some of the genes with the highest expression values were not able to be identified from our proteomic analysis. Proteome analysis of "reeled" silk fibres of N. plumipes and N. pilipes revealed 29 and 18 proteins, respectively, most of which were identified as silk fibre proteins. This study is the first silk gland specific transcriptome and proteome analysis for these species and will assist in the future development of a biomimetic spider silk.
天然蛛丝是世界上最坚韧的蛋白质材料之一,但即使经过几十年的深入研究,真正的仿生蛛丝仍然难以捉摸。在这项研究中,我们利用下一代测序技术生成了两种澳大利亚金蛛(Nephila plumipes 和 Nephila pilipes)的主壶腹腺转录组,以鉴定可能在最终聚合物构建中共同起作用的高度表达的预测蛋白。此外,我们还通过液相色谱串联质谱法进行蛋白质组学分析,以分析每种物种的天然固体丝纤维,以确认在丝腺中高度表达的预测蛋白存在于最终的丝产品中。我们分别将 N. plumipes 和 N. pilipes 的丝腺转录组组装成 69812 和 70123 个连续序列。基因表达分析表明,丝基因序列是表达最强烈的基因之一,我们能够从这两个物种中获得超过 1300 个氨基酸的丝序列。然而,一些表达值最高的基因无法从我们的蛋白质组学分析中鉴定出来。N. plumipes 和 N. pilipes 的“纺出”丝纤维的蛋白质组分析分别揭示了 29 和 18 种蛋白质,其中大多数被鉴定为丝纤维蛋白。这项研究是针对这两个物种的首次进行的丝腺特异性转录组和蛋白质组分析,将有助于未来仿生蛛丝的开发。