Chemistry and structure of silk

Abstract

Silk, which has been utilized widely as an excellent textile fiber, has also been used as a good material for research, as a typical protein. Numerous studies on silk, carried out continuously over a period of more than one century, have contributed not only to the improvement of production process and quality of raw silk and silk products, that has supported the development of sericulture and silk industry, but also to the progress of research on protein and fiber. In the present article some of the recent studies selected from the research works in Japan on the chemistry and structure of silk will be described briefly.