The bionic spider silk, hailed as "biosteel", has recently been sought after by the new material industry, but how to obtain large amounts of spider silk fiber has always been an industry problem, and this problem has been a breakthrough in China.
ZJJX Super Silk Technology Group has successfully obtained a variety of black widow spider silk silkworm species. It is the only institution in the industry that has successfully introduced black widow spider silk genes and obtained bionic silk with excellent mechanical properties. It is expected to be the first to realize the commercial application of black widow spider silk.
The world's first genetically modified "Black Widow Spider Silk"
Spider traction silk is the protein silk fiber with the most excellent mechanical properties in nature. Because of its excellent performance, it can be widely used in military industry, biomedicine, high-strength composite materials and other fields. The black widow spider silk is one of the most excellent traction silk among all the more than 44,000 species of spider silk.
Due to the spider's own characteristics, the amount of individual spinning is small, and a large amount of spider silk cannot be obtained through breeding. Scientists at home and abroad have worked hard for more than 30 years, hoping to use exogenous expression systems to produce spider silk, but they have not yet achieved industrialization.
The black widow spider traction silk developed by ZJJX has a maximum stress of about 818 MPa, which is 3.86 times higher than silk, which is close to spider silk; the maximum strain reaches 44%, which is 2.2 times higher than silk and exceeds spider silk. At present, the company has obtained multiple varieties of spider bionic silk silkworm, such as grape gland silk, flag gland silk, poly gland silk and pear gland silk. At the same time, the R&D team is actively developing bionic silk with 6 times the strength.
The silkworm spider super bionic silk developed by ZJJX does not use simple synthetic extraction technology on the market, but a more difficult and more widely applied downstream genetic modification technology. It is the world's only successful introduction of black widow spider drag silk gene and obtained mechanical The mechanism of excellent bionic silk.
To put it simply, the black widow spider gene is directly introduced into the silkworm body, and the silkworm re-spins the silk. The silk spit out is no longer fragile, and has stronger toughness and strength than steel, and is lighter, thinner, and thinner. soft.
ZJJX has obtained three national invention patents for the related technology of "Using Bombyx mori silk gland bioreactor to synthesize and secrete black widow spider drag silk protein".
At present, the black widow spider silk has been tested on the company's factory production line, including testing the toughness, strength, lightness, and softness of its fabrics, and will gradually enter the market in the future.
As a biological protein silk, black widow spider silk not only has superior performance, but also has a wide range of applications. It can be used in military, biomedical, consumer apparel and other fields, covering a trillion market.
In the military industry, black widow spider silk is an excellent material for making body armor. Compared with KEVLAR, the core material of the current mainstream body armor, under the same weight, black widow spider silk is 15 times tougher than Kevlar and 5 times stronger than steel. With the same toughness and strength, the weight of black widow spider silk is much lighter than Kevlar.
In addition, black widow spider silk can also be made into protective covers for radars, satellites and other equipment and military buildings. Used for weaving parachutes, it has the characteristics of light weight, anti-winding, strong unfolding force, good wind resistance, durability and so on.
In biomedicine, black widow spider silk is also widely used. It can be used as high-performance biomaterials to make wound closure materials and physiological tissue engineering materials, such as artificial joints, artificial tendons, ligaments, prostheses, tissue repair, neurosurgery and ophthalmology and other degradable ultra-fine wound sutures, etc. product. The biggest advantage of products made from black widow spider silk is that there is almost no rejection reaction with human tissues. In addition, the service life is usually up to 5 to 10 years, and the cost is also very advantageous.
In the consumer field, fabrics made of spider silk fibers are smooth and shiny, resistant to high temperatures, anti-ultraviolet, and anti-static. As a polymer protein, the biodegradability of spider silk can also reduce environmental pollution.
In the field of high-strength materials such as composite materials and aerospace clothing, black widow spider silk can be used to weave protective materials, wheel tyres, and high-strength fishing nets. In terms of construction, it can replace steel bars in concrete and be used in bridges, high-rise buildings and civil buildings, greatly reducing the weight of the building itself.
The industrial cost of "black technology" new materials with such broad application prospects is actually not high. According to industry experts, the production cost of black widow spider bionic silk is almost the same as that of white factory silk. It can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
ZJJX said that China is the world's largest silk-producing country, with rich sources of silk, and silkworms with black widow spider genes have no difficulty in large-scale breeding and production.
Professor Zhong Boxiong, the core researcher of the black widow spider bionic silk, has been researching genetically modified silkworms for more than 20 years, leading the industry in related technologies for three to five years.
According to ZJJX, the company will vigorously increase its investment after the super-silk technology products have the conditions for mass production. Currently, the black widow spider bionic silk is testing fabrics on the TX weaving production line, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZJJX. Once the fabric is qualified, the existing TX weaving production line can be converted to a bionic silk fabric production line and mass production will begin.
ZJJX masters the world's top bionic silk black technology, silkworm cocoon harvesting and drying and silk fabric mass production capabilities. At the same time, it has a very broad downstream application market, and its future prospects are promising.