Biomaterial silk sutures from Indigenous Indonesian wild silkmoth cocoon of Attacus atlas

Silk is biocompatible as biomaterial and has been used commercially as sutures. Silks that are obtained from the cocoon are become long-standing interest by the scientist. The cocoon biophysics structure should be understood to make it constructive and effective. The scientist recently put attention on appearance and behavior of cocoon produced by different type of silkworm. More interesting properties of the silk are that the mechanical properties exceed all natural polymer and synthetic materials. Some silks already explored for biomaterial such as Bombyx mori from domesticated mulberry silkworm or from non-mulberry silk such as Antheraea mylitta, Antheraea assamenis, Antheraea pernyi, Philosamia ricini, Samia cyn-thiaricini. In our research, a type of silk suture is being developed from species of Attacus atlas which is Indigenous from Indonesia to obtain better biocompatible sutures. A. atlas is a species of silk moth that consume not only single types of leaves. Silk suture that already established in the market is a base product of Bombyx mori species of silk which is only consume one type of leaf (mulberry leaves). The Quality of cocoon fiber then can be arranged base on the types of the leaves that is consumed. Better biocompatibility sutures comparing with recent commercial silk sutures which is not biocompatible, can be achieved by feeding with variety types of leaves. The biocompatible fiber for future application as sutures is possible to be prepared by feeding the wild silkworm of A. atlas with leaf of E. variegate. The fiber is found rich with kalium (K) as well as chloride (Cl) with irregular shape of crystal at the surface of the fiber.