The present disclosure provides polypeptides which encode a silk polypeptide, wherein at least a portion of the polypeptide has a coiled coil structure comprising at least 10 copies of the heptad sequence abcdefg, and wherein at least 25% of the amino acids at position a are alanine residues and at least 20% of the amino acids at position d are aromatic residues. The present disclosure also provides nucleic acids encoding such polypeptides, and recombinant cells and/or organisms which synthesize the polypeptides. The polypeptides can be used for a variety of purposes such as in the production of personal care products, plastics, textiles, and biomedical products.
