Abstract
Silk fibroin from Bombyx mori (silkworm) distinguishes for its unique mechanical performance, controllable degradation rates, and easily large-scale production, making it attractive models for a variety of biomaterial design. These outstanding properties of silk fibroin originate from its unique modular composition of silk proteins. To exploit the structure–function relationship and fabricate silk fibroin–based biomaterials, comprehensive strategies to uncover assembly behaviors of fibrous proteins are necessary. This chapter describes methods to produce regenerated silk fibroin protein from Bombyx mori silk and their self-assembly strategies. This could provide insight into the fabrication of various silk fibroin–based biomaterials, such as hydrogels, tubes, sponges, fibers, microspheres, and diverse thin film patterns, which can be used for textiles, electronics and optics, environmental engineering, and biomedical applications.
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Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges insightful discussion and suggestions from Prof. Shengjie Ling and thanks Dr. Xinyang Wang from ShanghaiTech University, Dr. Linlin Wei from Bruker, and Ph.D. student Yawen Liu for the helpful suggestion with NanoIR characterization method . Financial support was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51703128).
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Kong, N. (2021). Self-Assembly of Bombyx mori Silk Fibroin. In: Ling, S. (eds) Fibrous Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2347. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1574-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1574-4_7
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