Recombinant spider silk proteins
The present invention is directed to recombinant spider silk proteins, nucleic acids, coding for these recombinant spider silk proteins, as well as hosts suitable for expressing those nucleic acids. Furthermore, the present invention is directed to a method of aggregation of spider silk proteins and the use of the proteins in the field of biotechnology and/or medicine and other industrial fields, in particular in the manufacture of automotive parts, in the aircraft construction, in the processing of textiles and leather, as well as in the manufacture and processing of paper and the like.
1. A recombinant spider silk protein comprising
a) one or more synthetic repetitive spider silk protein sequences, wherein the synthetic repetitive sequence comprises between 10 and 50 repeat units, wherein the repeat unit consists of the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:5 (module C) or variants thereof, wherein the variants in each case comprise between 1 to 5 amino acid substitutions, deletions, insertions, and/or additions, which do not negatively affect tensile strength and elasticity of a thread formed from the recombinant spider silk protein.
2. The recombinant spider silk protein of claim 1 , wherein the synthetic repetitive sequence is SEQ ID NO:5 concatenated 16 times or SEQ ID NO:5 concatenated 32 times.
3. A method for closing a wound or for providing a replacement material to a wound, comprising employing the recombinant spider silk protein of claim 1 to close a wound or to provide a replacement material to a wound.
4. A method for the manufacture of wound closure or coverage systems, comprising employing the recombinant spider silk protein of claim 1 in the preparation of wound closure or coverage systems.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the wound closure system comprises suture materials.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the suture materials comprise neurosurgery or ophthalmic surgery suture materials.
7. A method for the manufacture of replacement materials, comprising employing the recombinant spider silk protein of claim 1 in the preparation of replacement materials.
8. A method for the manufacture of automotive and aircraft parts, comprising employing the recombinant spider silk protein of claim 1 in the preparation of automotive and aircraft parts.
9. Wound closure or coverage systems, suture materials, replacement materials, preferably artificial cartilage, tendon materials, automotive parts or parts used in the aircraft construction, which comprise a protein of claim 1 .
10. The method of claim 7 , wherein the replacement materials comprise artificial cartilage or tendon materials.
11. A recombinant spider silk protein comprising one or more authentic non-repetitive spider silk protein sequences, wherein the authentic non-repetitive sequences are selected from SEQ ID NO:10 and variants thereof, wherein the variants in each case comprise between 1 to 5 amino acid substitutions, deletions, insertions, and/or additions, which do not negatively affect tensile strength and elasticity of a thread formed from the recombinant spider silk protein.
12. The recombinant spider silk protein of claim 11 , wherein the authentic non-repetitive sequence is SEQ ID NO:10.
13. The recombinant spider silk protein of claim 11 , wherein the nucleic acid encoding the authentic non-repetitive sequence is modified in order to adapt said sequence to expression in a host.
14. The recombinant spider silk protein of claim 13 wherein the nucleic acid is SEQ ID NO:14 or a variant thereof which encodes the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 10 with 1 to 5 amino acid substitutions, deletions, insertions, and/or additions.