• Journal of Marine Bioscience and Biotechnology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.34-43
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• 2018

Silicon has become of increasing importance as the basic element of many high-technology products. Its synthesis is very difficult requiring high temperature solid-state reactions (> $1000^{\circ}C$) or lower temperature methods ($100-200^{\circ}C$) involving hydrothermal and solvothermal reactions under extreme pH conditions. In nature, on the other hand, a wide range of living organisms have collectively evolved the means of biosilicification at the astounding rate of gigatons/year. This is impressive because biosilicification in these organisms occurs under mild physiological conditions. Marine sponges possess the ability to sequester soluble silicon sources from their environments and assemble them into intricate 3D architecture. The advent of molecular biology has recently made it possible to glean molecular information about biosilicification from these systems and it turned out that enzyme silicatein is the core of biosilicification. In this review, biosilicification regulated by silicatein and its mechanism are described. Also, production of silicatein through recombinant technology and several applications of recombinant silicatein are described including immobilization of silicatein, formation of Au or Ag nanoparticles on nanowires, nanolithography approaches, core-shell materials, encapsulation, bone replacement materials, and microstructured optical fibers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.557-557
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• 2012

Silicatein-${\alpha}$, the enzyme extracted from silica spicules in glass sponges, has been studied extensively in the way of chemistry from 1999, in which the pioneering work by Morse, D. E. - the discovery of the enzymatic hydrolysis in Silicatein-${\alpha}$ - was published. Since its reaction conditions are physiologically favored, synthesis of various materials, such as gallium oxide, zirconium oxide, and silicon oxide, was achieved without any hazardous wastes. Although some groups synthesized oxide films and particles, they have not achieved yet controlled morphogenesis in the reaction conditions mentioned above. With the knowledge of catalytic triad involved in hydrolysis of silicone alkoxide and oligomerization of silicic acid, we designed the novel peptide amphiphiles to not only form self-assembled structure, but also display similar activities to silicatein-${\alpha}$. Designed templates were able to self-assemble into left-handed helices for the peptide amphiphiles with L-form amino acid, catalyzing polycondensation of silicic acids onto the surface of them. It led to the formation of silica helices with 30-50 nm diameters. These results were characterized by various techniques, including SEM, TEM, and STEM. Given the situation that nano-bio-technology, the bio-applicable technology in nanometer scale, has been attracting considerable attention; this result could be applied to the latest applications in biotechnology, such as biosensors, lab-on-a-chip, biocompatible nanodevices.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.298-302
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• 2013

In this study, the effect of sericin on synthesis of the silica was investigated. Using the mixture of sericin solution and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), it was confirmed that silica could be synthesized in the presence of sericin, which was verified by thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier-transformed infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer (NMR) analysis. The TGA and FT-IR data revealed that silica-sericin complex was formed as a final product. Based on the TGA result, the content of silica and sericin in the complex would be 87 and 13%, respectively. The degree of silica condensation was higher than the natural biosilica. It could be concluded that sericin can induce the synthesis of silica directly from TEOS, which is similar to silicatein from marine sponges.