Bioactive hierarchical silk fibers created by bioinspired self-assembly
Artificial recapitulation of the hierarchy of natural protein fibers is crucial to providing strategies for developing advanced fibrous materials. However, it is challenging due to the complexity of the natural environment. Inspired by the liquid crystalline spinning of spiders, we report the develo...
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Published in | Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 2375 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
22.04.2021
Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Artificial recapitulation of the hierarchy of natural protein fibers is crucial to providing strategies for developing advanced fibrous materials. However, it is challenging due to the complexity of the natural environment. Inspired by the liquid crystalline spinning of spiders, we report the development of natural silk-like hierarchical fibers, with bundles of nanofibrils aligned in their long-axis direction, by self-assembly of crystallized silk fibroin (SF) droplets. The formation of self-assembled SF fibers is a process of coalesced droplets sprouting to form a branched fibrous network, which is similar to the development of capillaries in our body. The as-assembled hierarchical SF fibers are highly bioactive and can significantly enhance the spreading and growth of human umbilical vein endothelial cells compared to the natural SF fibers. This work could help to understand the natural silk spinning process of spiders and provides a strategy for design and development of advanced fibrous biomaterials for various applications.
The creation of silk fibres using bioinspired approaches is of interest for biomaterials development. Here, the authors report on the creation of mimetic hierarchical silk fibres by the rotational self-assembly of silk fibroin droplets and demonstrate the creation of bioactive silk materials. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2041-1723 2041-1723 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-021-22673-4 |