上海科技大学知识管理系统

The exceptional mechanical properties of spider silks from their extraordinary natural design make them outstanding biomaterial candidates. Herein, inspired by the outer egg sac silk from Nephila pilipes , we introduce a gradient of recombinant biomimetic polypeptides (BMPPs) through a semi-rational design. The synthesized BMPPs show good water solubility with dynamic conformations of random coil/helix. Both biomimetic nanofiber membranes and macrofiber yarns are fabricated using BMPPs as blend with polycaprolactone (PCL) through electrospinning. The resulting nanofiber membrane yields almost double tensile strength (22.7 ±3.3 MPa) compared to that of PCL (12.5 ±1.4 MPa), without sacrifice of tough- ness. The as-fabricated microfiber yarns could accommodate both improvement of tensile strength (208 ±8.3 MPa, almost twice of PCL value) and toughness (163 ±13 MJ/m 3 , more than twice of PCL value), suggesting the crosslink role of BMPP in PCL network. By fusion of cell-binding domains in the BMPP, the materials also illustrate great potentials into new biomedical materials.