Antibiotic Spider Silk: Site-Specific Functionalization of Recombinant Spider Silk Using "Click" Chemistry

David Harvey; Philip Bardelang; Sara L Goodacre; Alan Cockayne; Neil R Thomas

doi:10.1002/adma.201604245

Antibiotic Spider Silk: Site-Specific Functionalization of Recombinant Spider Silk Using "Click" Chemistry

Adv Mater. 2017 Mar;29(10). doi: 10.1002/adma.201604245. Epub 2016 Dec 28.

Authors

David Harvey¹, Philip Bardelang¹, Sara L Goodacre², Alan Cockayne², Neil R Thomas¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry, Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
² School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.

PMID: 28028885
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201604245

Abstract

In a new, versatile approach to fun-ction-alizing recombinant spider silk, L-azidohomoalanine is introduced residue-specifically in the minispidroin protein 4RepCT through expression in an E. coli methionine auxotroph. Both fluorophores and the antibiotic levofloxacin are attached to this bio-orthogonal amino acid using copper-catalyzed click chemistry, either before or after the silk fibers are self-assembled.

Keywords: antibiotic; click chemistry; self-assembly; spider silk; unnatural (noncanonical) amino acid mutagenesis.