Hydrogels are formed by the self-assembly of cross-linked building blocks in water.By using a folded protein as the building block, we wish to harness the intrinsic and specific mechanical properties of the individual folded proteins. We propose to use Rheo-SANS on the instrument SANS2d to investigate theeffect of stress on the architecture of hydrogels made using folded, globular maltose binding proteins. Our aim is to gain insight into the connection between the structure of the hydrogel network and its mechanical properties. This new information is crucial in building up a cross length scale understanding of the mechanical properties of a protein hydrogel, and will allow us to determine design parameters (specifically cross-link density and location on protein). This will allow the development of novel hydrogels which will have great potential in healthcare applications.