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A quicker degradation rate is yielded by a novel kind of transgenic silk fibroin consisting of shortened silk fibroin heavy chains fused with matrix metalloproteinase cleavage sites

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Abstract

Degradation performance of silk fibroin is an important property for its medical applications. Herein we constructed a shortened silk fibroin heavy chain protein fused with a matrix metalloproteinase cleavage site (SSFH-MMP) along with a glutathione S-transferase tag ahead. The digestion assay shows it can be cut by matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) at its MMP cleavage site. Furthermore, we introduced the SSFH-MMP into silk fibroin by genetic modification of silkworms in order to increase the degradation rate of the silk fibroin. After acquisition of a race of transgenic silkworms with the coding sequence of the MMP cleavage site in their genomic DNA, we tested some properties of their silk fibroin designated TSF-MMP. The results show that the TSF-MMP has MMP cleavage sites and yields a quicker degradation rate during dilution in MMP-2 enzyme buffer or implantation into tumor tissues compared with that of normal silk fibroin. Moreover, the TSF-MMP is in vitro non-toxic to human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) indicating that the TSF-MMP may become a biomaterial with a quicker degradation rate for its medical applications.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (31100118, 31272507); the Science and Technology Support Program (social development) of the Jiangsu Province, China. No. BE2010705; Special Fund of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, No. 201003560; the Jiangsu Government Scholarship for Overseas Studies; the Startup Scientific Research Fund from Jiangsu University for Advanced Professionals, No. 08JDG035; Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK2011495); The National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2012CB114604); The student scientific research project of Jiangsu University, No. 11A452.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Life Sciences, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, 212013, People’s Republic of China

    Guoping Huang, Danfeng Yang, Chunfeng Sun, Keping Chen, Chunxia Zhang, Huiqing Chen & Qin Yao

  2. College of Science, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, 330045, People’s Republic of China

    Jianping Huang

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  1. Guoping Huang
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Correspondence to Guoping Huang or Keping Chen.

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Huang, G., Yang, D., Sun, C. et al. A quicker degradation rate is yielded by a novel kind of transgenic silk fibroin consisting of shortened silk fibroin heavy chains fused with matrix metalloproteinase cleavage sites. J Mater Sci: Mater Med 25, 1833–1842 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10856-014-5220-6

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