Confirmation of Bioinformatics Predictions of the Structural Domains in Honeybee Silk.

ABSTRACT: Honeybee larvae produce a silk made up of proteins in predominantly a coiled coil molecular structure. These proteins can be produced in recombinant systems, making them desirable templates for the design of advanced materials. However, the atomic level structure of these proteins is proving difficult to determine: firstly, because coiled coils are difficult to crystalize; and secondly, fibrous proteins crystalize as fibres rather than as discrete protein units. In this study, we synthesised peptides from the central structural domain, as well as the N- and C-terminal domains, of the honeybee silk. We used circular dichroism spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and molecular dynamics to investigate the folding behaviour of the central domain peptides. We found that they folded as predicted

SUBMITTER: Woodhead AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6403662 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature