William Astbury

Aspirin see Acetylsalicylic acid Astbury, William T, 210 Aston, Francis W., 131, 208,... 

Structural and Functional Relationships in Fibrous Proteins William Astbury discovered that the x-ray pattern of wool shows a repeating structural unit spaced about 5.2 A along the length of the wool fiber. When he steamed and... 

WILLIAM THOMAS ASTBURY 1898-1961 A Personal Tribute By KENNETH BAILEY... 

William Thomas Astbury found that fibrous proteins, such as keratin, could behave as if they had more than one structure. Mammalian keratin, such as wool, normally gives a diffraction pattern referred to as the a-keratin X-ray pattern with repeat distances of 5.1 A. On stretching, however, a different diflfraction pattern, the y9-keratin pattern, is obtained. He found that it is possible to reconvert /3-keratin (stretched)... 

The British scientist William T. Astbury and his coworkers showed in 1931 that hair, muscle, horn, and porcupine quill give a characteristic x-ray pattern, and that when hair is steamed and stretched to double its original length the pattern changes to one resembling that of silk. They concluded that the polypeptide chains in unstretched hair are folded, and for nearly twenty years many scientists interested in molecular structure tried to determine the nature of the folding. 

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