A marine photosynthetic microbial cell factory as a platform for spider silk production

• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-1099-6
• Publication Date: 2020-07-08T10:03:03Z
• Authors: Choon Pin Foong; Mieko Higuchi-Tak...; Ali D. Malay; Nur Alia Oktaviani; Chonprakun Thagun; Keiji Numata
• Keywords: Spider Silk

Abstract Photosynthetic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria, purple bacteria and microalgae have attracted great interest promising platforms for economical sustainable production of bioenergy, biochemicals, biopolymers. Here, we demonstrate heterotrophic spider dragline silk proteins, major ampullate spidroins (MaSp), in a marine photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodovulum sulfidophilum , under both photoheterotrophic photoautotrophic growth conditions. Spider is biodegradable biocompatible material with remarkable mechanical properties. R. grow by utilizing abundant renewable nonfood bioresources seawater, sunlight, gaseous CO 2 N thus making this microbial cell factory green platform proteins biopolymers, including silks.