single honeybee silk protein mimics properties of multi-protein silk单个蜜蜂丝蛋白模拟多丝的性质.pdfVIP

Single Honeybee Silk Protein Mimics Properties of Multi- Protein Silk 1 2 3 2 3 1 Tara D. Sutherland *, Jeffrey S. Church , Xiao Hu , Mickey G. Huson , David L. Kaplan , Sarah Weisman 1 Entomology Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation (CSIRO), Canberra, Australia, 2 Materials Science and Engineering CSIRO, Geelong, Victoria, Australia, 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, United States of America Abstract Honeybee silk is composed of four fibrous proteins that, unlike other silks, are readily synthesized at full-length and high yield. The four silk genes have been conserved for over 150 million years in all investigated bee, ant and hornet species, implying a distinct functional role for each protein. However, the amino acid composition and molecular architecture of the proteins are similar, suggesting functional redundancy. In this study we compare materials generated from a single honeybee silk protein to materials containing all four recombinant proteins or to natural honeybee silk. We analyse solution conformation by dynamic light scattering and circular dichroism, solid state structure by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy, and fiber tensile properties by stress-strain analysis. The results demonstrate that fibers artificially generated from a single recombinant silk protein can reproduce the structural and mechanical properties of the natural silk. The importance of the four protein complex found in natural silk may lie in biological silk storage or hierarchical self-assembly. The finding that the functional properties of the mature material can be achieve