Unraveling the Molecular Mechanisms of Thermo-responsive Properties of Silk-Elastin-Like Proteins by Integrating Multiscale Modeling and Experiment.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive hydrogels tailor-made from silk-elastin-like proteins (SELPs) possess excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability with properties that are tunable and responsive to multiple simultaneous external stimuli. To unravel the molecular mechanisms of their physical response to external stimuli in tandem with experiments, here we predict and measure the variation in structural properties as a function of temperature through coarse-grained (CG) modeling of individual and crosslinked SE_8Y and S₄E_8Y molecules, which have ratios of 1:8 and 4:8 of silk to elastin blocks respectively. Extensive structural reshuffling in single SE_8Y molecules led to the increased compactness of the structure, whereas S₄E_8Y molecules did not ex

SUBMITTER: Yeo J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6241539 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature