The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons.

[3] Silk production also occurs in hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants), silverfish, caddisflies, mayflies, thrips, leafhoppers, beetles, lacewings, fleas, flies, and midges.

[5] The production of silk originated in China in the Neolithic period, although it would eventually reach other places of the world (Yangshao culture, 4th millennium BC).

Several kinds of wild silk, produced by caterpillars other than the mulberry silkworm, have been known and spun in China, Indian subcontinent, and Europe since ancient times.

[15][16] The earliest surviving example of silk fabric dates from about 3630 BC, and was used as the wrapping for the body of a child at a Yangshao culture site in Qingtaicun near Xingyang, Henan.

Silks were originally reserved for the emperors of China for their own use and gifts to others, but spread gradually through Chinese culture and trade both geographically and socially, and then to many regions of Asia.

The fabric was light, it survived the damp climate of the Yangtze region, absorbed ink well, and provided a white background for the text.

[18] In July 2007, archaeologists discovered intricately woven and dyed silk textiles in a tomb in Jiangxi province, dated to the Eastern Zhou dynasty roughly 2,500 years ago.

About 97% of the raw mulberry silk comes from six Indian states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and West Bengal.

[citation needed] Silk is produced year-round in Thailand by two types of silkworms, the cultured Bombycidae and wild Saturniidae.

[36] The 7th century CE murals of Afrasiyab in Samarkand, Sogdiana, show a Chinese Embassy carrying silk and a string of silkworm cocoons to the local Sogdian ruler.

[37] In the Torah, a scarlet cloth item called in Hebrew "sheni tola'at" שני תולעת – literally "crimson of the worm" – is described as being used in purification ceremonies, such as those following a leprosy outbreak (Leviticus 14), alongside cedar wood and hyssop (za'atar).

Modern attire has raised a number of issues, including, for instance, the permissibility of wearing silk neckties, which are masculine articles of clothing.

[24] During the reign of emperor Tiberius, sumptuary laws were passed that forbade men from wearing silk garments, but these proved ineffectual.

Contemporary accounts state that monks working for the emperor Justinian I smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople from China inside hollow canes.

[42] All top-quality looms and weavers were located inside the Great Palace complex in Constantinople, and the cloth produced was used in imperial robes or in diplomacy, as gifts to foreign dignitaries.

The silk of Catanzaro supplied almost all of Europe and was sold in a large market fair in the port of Reggio Calabria, to Spanish, Venetian, Genovese, and Dutch merchants.

[44] The Silk Exchange in Valencia from the 15th century—where previously in 1348 also perxal (percale) was traded as some kind of silk—illustrates the power and wealth of one of the great Mediterranean mercantile cities.

Silkworms were raised and reeled under the direction of Zoe Lady Hart Dyke, later moving to Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire in 1956.

[50] During World War II, supplies of silk for UK parachute manufacture were secured from the Middle East by Peter Gaddum.

This economy particularly gained traction in the vicinity of Northampton, Massachusetts and its neighboring Williamsburg, where a number of small firms and cooperatives emerged.

Once the worms start pupating in their cocoons, these are dissolved in boiling water in order for individual long fibres to be extracted and fed into the spinning reel.

Fabrics that are often made from silk include satin, charmeuse, habutai, chiffon, taffeta, crêpe de chine, dupioni, noil, tussah, and shantung, among others.

[78] A special manufacturing process removes the outer sericin coating of the silk, which makes it suitable as non-absorbable surgical sutures.

[82] In the past 30 years, it has been widely studied and used as a biomaterial due to its mechanical strength, biocompatibility, tunable degradation rate, ease to load cellular growth factors (for example, BMP-2), and its ability to be processed into several other formats such as films, gels, particles, and scaffolds.

Wax or silicone is usually used as a coating to avoid fraying and potential immune responses[83] when silk fibers serve as suture materials.

Although the lack of detailed characterization of silk fibers, such as the extent of the removal of sericin, the surface chemical properties of coating material, and the process used, make it difficult to determine the real immune response of silk fibers in literature, it is generally believed that sericin is the major cause of immune response.

Even though silk sutures serve well, they exist and interact within a limited period depending on the recovery of wounds (several weeks), much shorter than that in tissue engineering.

The acidic degraded products of polyglycolides and polylactides will decrease the pH of the ambient environment and thus adversely influence the metabolism of cells, which is not an issue for silk.

In addition, silk materials can retain strength over a desired period from weeks to months on an as-needed basis, by mediating the content of beta sheets.