Silk, structure

Fig. 15c. Since the polypeptide backbone of the silk structure is expected to show variations in the torsion angles, normal iterative fitting of the torsion angles to model the experimental spectrum will probably fail since it does not include a distribution of the parameters. To handle this problem, Meier and co-workersused an alternative approach and modeled the experimental spectrum m2) as...

Silk. Structural studies of the model peptides of Bombyx mori silk-elastin like protein were undertaken using solid state NMR. Detailed structural analyses were performed using deconvolution subroutines assuming Gaussian line shapes for the Ala peaks. 

As revealed by studies of silk, structural proteins include regular and random regions in the chain structure which would be expected to give rise to crystalline and amorphous material. In contrast, the amorphous component of synthetic polymers arises from entanglements of the coiled chains that cannot be resolved during the crystallization process. New polymer properties may be achievable once we can design polymer chains with such controlled sequences. 

Romer, L. and Scheibel, T. 2008. The elaborate structure of spider silk Structure and function of a natural high performance fiber. Prion, 2,154-61. 

T. Asakura, Y. Suzuki, Y. Nakazawa, K. Yazawa, G. P. Holland and J. L. Yarger, Silk Structure Studied with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Prog. Nucl. Magn. Reson. Spectrosc., 2013, 69, 23. 

In order to functionalize silk fibers without disturbing their performance, the structure of silk fibers needs to be understood. Although the Bombyx mori silkworm silk structure has been investigated for some time, the hierarchical structure did... 

The density of raw silk fibers is about 1.33-1.45 g cm . Raw cocoon silk fibers have good extensibility (25-35%) and reasonably good strength (300-600 MPa). For different silkworms, silk properties also are very different Some silk has strong mechanical properties, and other silk shows good biodegradabihty. The structure of the different types of silk has become a research focus. Recently, the diversity of test instruments is also facilitating the study of silk structure [21, 22]. 

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