Under certain stimulus, sea anemone stretches and shrinks its body rapidly. We assumed that silk or elastin-like protein involves this reaction and found that there are unique repeats of decamer mainly consists of glycine and proline more than 50% of its whole amino acids. Through immunohistochemistry, we proved that the unique repeat sequence is distributed along with skin, especially at their tentacles. This discovered silk-like protein (30 kDa) was successfully expressed in Escherichia coli, spun by wet spinning method, and performed tensile test to determine mechanical properties. Its properties, in terms of strength and extensibility, exceeded to elastin or resilin. To improve the properties (strength, extensibility, stiffness and toughness), we constructed repeated 60 KDa of silk-like protein. Through this approach, strength of protein was able to compete against synthetic rubber. This 60 kDa silk-like protein also showed outperformed stiffness compared to previous 30 kDa protein and tendon collagen. As for extensibility, it was roughly analogous to Kevlar, a synthetic fiber.

Recombinant silk materials from sea anemone

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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