Left: Maisha in the lab; Right: Spinning spider silk proteins into fibers
Maisha Prome ‘27
(she/her)
Home Department: Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (Isaacs Lab)
Research Project: Expanding spider silk properties by incorporation of multiple nonstandard amino acids in recoded bacteria
Spider silks are a biomaterial that possess exceptional physical properties, from high tensile strength to toughness to extensibility. Unlike many synthetic polymers, spider silks are also biocompatible and renewable, making them ideal for a wide range of applications in sustainable manufacturing, and medicine. We can further expand the range of applications by using genetic code expansion technologies to insert non-standard amino acids (nsAAs) into the spider silk protein. By incorporating nsAAs with diverse chemistries, I aim to enhance existing properties (mechanical strength) and encode novel properties (electrical conductivity and flame retardancy) in spider silks.
Relevant Publications
Grome et al. (2025) “Engineering a genomically recoded organism with one stop codon”