High-Level Production of Spider Silk Protein by Fed-Batch Cultivation of Recombinant Escherichia coli and Its Purification

Silk proteins from Nephila clavipes are fibrous proteins containing repetitive sequences with both crystalline and amorphous domains. In order to obtain high-level production of silk protein, the synthetic genes had 16 contiguous units of the consensus repeat sequence of the silk protein were expressed in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) under the strong inducible T7 promoter. For production of recombinant silk protein in large amounts, pH-stat fed-batch cultures were carried out. The recombinant silk protein was produced as soluble forms in E. coli, and the recombinant silk protein content was as high as 11% of the total protein. When cells were induced at $OD_{600}$ of 60, the amount of silk protein produced was 6.49 g/L. After simple purification steps, 9.2 mg of silk protein that was more than 80% pure was obtained from a 50 mL culture, and the recovery yield was 26.3%.