Silk self-assembly

Silk

We continue with the theme of protein-binding, but now to other proteins. The outstanding properties of spider and silkworm silk are even more outstanding when we discover how the fibres are made in nature. Somehow the molecular 'stickiness' of silk proteins is just enough to trigger their assembly into fibres when just the right flow conditions apply (at the spinneret). Working closely with experimental colleagues, we will develop theories of assembly in flow to help find out what makes silk, and its processing, so remarkable.

Charley Shaefer and Tom C.B. McLeish, ‘Power Law Stretching of Associating Polymers in Steady-State Extensional Flow’, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 057801 (2021)

Schaefer, Charley, Peter R. Laity, Chris Holland, and Tom C. B. McLeish, ‘Silk Protein Solution: A Natural Example of Sticky Reptation’, Macromolecules, 53, 2669−2676 (2020)

Schaefer, Charley; de Bruijn, Rene A. J.; McLeish, Tom C. B., ‘Ligand-regulated oligomerisation of allosterically interacting proteins’, Soft Matter, 14, 6961-6968 (2018)

Davies, Robert P. W., Binbin Liu, Steven Maude, Lisa M. Carrick, Irina Nyrkova, Tom C. McLeish, Sarah A. Harris, Peptide strand length controls the energetics of self-assembly and morphology of b-sheet fibrils, Biopolymers e23073 (2017)