Abstract
Naturally spun silks generate fibres with unique properties, including strength, elasticity and biocompatibility. Here we describe a microfluidics-based strategy to spin liquid native silk, obtained directly from the silk gland of Bombyx mori silkworms, into micron-scale capsules with controllable geometry and variable levels of intermolecular β-sheet content in their protein shells. We demonstrate that such micrococoons can store internally the otherwise highly unstable liquid native silk for several months and without apparent effect on its functionality. We further demonstrate that these native silk micrococoons enable the effective encapsulation, storage and release of other aggregation-prone proteins, such as functional antibodies. These results show that native silk micrococoons are capable of preserving the full activity of sensitive cargo proteins that can aggregate and lose function under conditions of bulk storage, and thus represent an attractive class of materials for the storage and release of active biomolecules.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 15902 |
Journal | Nature Communications |
Volume | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 19 Jul 2017 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2017.
Funding
We thank the Center for Misfolding Diseases and Elan Pharmaceuticals (US, CMD, TPJK), the UK BBSRC and the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) through the ERC grant PhysProt (agreement n-337969) (TPJK and FV), the Frances and Augustus Newman Foundation (TPJK), the AFOSR (FV) and EPSRC (CH; EP/K005693/1) for financial support.We thank Swiss National Fondation for Science (SNF) for the financial support (grant number P2ELP2-162116 and P300P2-171219).
Funders | Funder number |
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Center for Misfolding Diseases and Elan Pharmaceuticals | |
FP7/2007 | |
Swiss National Fondation for Science | P300P2-171219, P2ELP2_162116 |
Air Force Office of Scientific Research | |
Seventh Framework Programme | 337969 |
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | EP/K005693/1 |
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | |
European Commission | |
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | 171219 |
Seventh Framework Programme |