Comments on: Follow Up http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/psquared/2011/04/18/follow-up/ The aesthetic alchemy of life Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:32:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: phil http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/psquared/2011/04/18/follow-up/comment-page-1/#comment-110 phil Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:11:47 +0000 http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/psquared/?p=847#comment-110 Sorry we didn’t get a chance on Monday to talk in class about your interesting “silky” project. In 2010 a really interesting research article came out showing how the silk molecule switches from the stored “liquid” form to the “air-dried” fibrous form. If you are on campus, you can access the article here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7295/full/nature08936.html

As your third example shows, silk fibers are largely made up of fully extended protein chains lined up next to one another to form (not shown in your third example) wide beta sheets. Interestingly, the structure analysis in the published paper proves that the liquid form of silk is mainly alpha helical. Fiber polymerization is therefore a change from alpha-to-beta secondary structure that is fairly similar to the transition that occurs when a prion protein switches from its normal alpha structure to the infectious beta structure.

See you Wednesday.

]]> By: bellkay http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/psquared/2011/04/18/follow-up/comment-page-1/#comment-108 bellkay Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:33:07 +0000 http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/psquared/?p=847#comment-108 I forgot to say that the third example is what I was planning to do.

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