Structural phase diagram of hydrated silks

DOI

The formation of silk fibres in both spiders and silkworms is characterized by a conversion of short range ordered structures in solution into long range ordered beta-sheet rich structures in the final fiber. The dynamics of the water and proteins chains involved in the conversion remains, however, unknown. It has been hypothesized that the key controlling phenomenon is a selective amide hydration by water molecules. We previously investigated the role of hydration and concluded that water could either promote or inhibit transitions that are involved in silk spinning. Now, we wish to test the effect of structural composition on the dynamics of silk films using quasi-elastic neutron scattering, cryo-Fourier transform infrared (cryo-FTIR) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). This will allow us to construct a phase diagram of the structural dynamics of hydrated silks.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.24067499
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/24067499
Provenance
Creator Dr Cedric Dicko; Dr Mark Telling; Dr Ann Terry
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2012
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2009-05-20T08:28:56Z
Temporal Coverage End 2009-12-02T05:53:50Z