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Enzymatic treatment of wool and silk fi bres 187

including silk-filled duvets but also used in the development of various
biomedical devices and applications. Demand for silk materials and their
production will increase continuously year by year. The textile industry will

continue to explore the use of enzymes to improve the efficiency of silk

degumming and the quality of the fibres. Research effort will be made to

extract the silk proteins, sericin or fibroin and modify them to produce other

textile fibres, or for biomedical uses.
The design of processes using various available enzymes will be studied
for raw wool scouring, silk degumming and their finishing. Integrated bio-

processes might be able to achieve multipurpose preparation and fi nishing
of protein fibres. Innovation of enzyme-based processes needs to be brought

into industrial production.

8.6 Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Peter Speakman for his valuable
comments.

8.7 References
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