Patent ID: 7288391

Claim:
A method for expressing at least one synthetic, artificial spider silk protein in a cell comprising: (a) providing at least one expression vector comprising a nucleic acid molecule encoding said synthetic spider silk protein, said nucleic acid sequence being operably linked to an exogenous promoter and at least one selectable marker gene which confers resistance to a selection agent; (b) contacting said cell with said expression vector under conditions wherein said vector enters said cell and expresses said nucleic acid molecule, thereby producing said spider silk protein; (c) incubating said cells in the presence of said selection agent and selecting those cells which survive in the presence of said agent, said cells which survive producing said at least one spider silk protein wherein said nucleic acid encodes a spider silk protein comprising a combination of spider silk unit repeats, said unit repeats selected from the group consisting of a plurality of elastic unit repeats, at least one linker repeat of SEQ ID NO: 39 or 41 and optionally helix repeats and hard repeats.