A new class of animal collagen masquerading as an insect silk

Tara D. Sutherland, Yong Y. Peng, Holly E. Trueman, Sarah Weisman, Shoko Okada, Andrew A. Walker, Alagacone Sriskantha, Jacinta F. White, Mickey G. Huson, Jerome A. Werkmeister, Veronica Glattauer, Violet Stoichevska, Stephen T. Mudie, Victoria S. Haritos, John A. M. Ramshaw

Collagen is ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom, where it comprises some 28 diverse molecules that form the extracellular matrix within organisms. In the 1960s, an extracorporeal animal collagen that forms the cocoon of a small group of hymenopteran insects was postulated. Here we categorically demonstrate that the larvae of a sawfly species produce silk from three small collagen proteins. The native proteins do not contain hydroxyproline, a post translational modification normally considered characteristic of animal collagens. The function of the proteins as silks explains their unusual collagen features. Recombinant proteins could be produced in standard bacterial expression systems and assembled into stable collagen molecules, opening the door to manufacture a new class of artificial collagen materials.