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Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea

Egg stalk silks of the common green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea likely comprise at least three different silk proteins. Based on the natural spinning process, it was hypothesized that these proteins self-assemble without shear stress, as adult lacewings do not use a spinneret. To examine this, the f...

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Autores principales: Neuenfeldt, Martin, Scheibel, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5485732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28608840
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom7020043
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author Neuenfeldt, Martin
Scheibel, Thomas
author_facet Neuenfeldt, Martin
Scheibel, Thomas
author_sort Neuenfeldt, Martin
collection PubMed
description Egg stalk silks of the common green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea likely comprise at least three different silk proteins. Based on the natural spinning process, it was hypothesized that these proteins self-assemble without shear stress, as adult lacewings do not use a spinneret. To examine this, the first sequence identification and determination of the gene expression profile of several silk proteins and various transcript variants thereof was conducted, and then the three major proteins were recombinantly produced in Escherichia coli encoded by their native complementary DNA (cDNA) sequences. Circular dichroism measurements indicated that the silk proteins in aqueous solutions had a mainly intrinsically disordered structure. The largest silk protein, which we named ChryC1, exhibited a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) behavior and self-assembled into fibers or film morphologies, depending on the conditions used. The second silk protein, ChryC2, self-assembled into nanofibrils and subsequently formed hydrogels. Circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy confirmed conformational changes of both proteins into beta sheet rich structures upon assembly. ChryC3 did not self-assemble into any morphology under the tested conditions. Thereby, through this work, it could be shown that recombinant lacewing silk proteins can be produced and further used for studying the fiber formation of lacewing egg stalks.
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spelling pubmed-54857322017-06-29 Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea Neuenfeldt, Martin Scheibel, Thomas Biomolecules Article Egg stalk silks of the common green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea likely comprise at least three different silk proteins. Based on the natural spinning process, it was hypothesized that these proteins self-assemble without shear stress, as adult lacewings do not use a spinneret. To examine this, the first sequence identification and determination of the gene expression profile of several silk proteins and various transcript variants thereof was conducted, and then the three major proteins were recombinantly produced in Escherichia coli encoded by their native complementary DNA (cDNA) sequences. Circular dichroism measurements indicated that the silk proteins in aqueous solutions had a mainly intrinsically disordered structure. The largest silk protein, which we named ChryC1, exhibited a lower critical solution temperature (LCST) behavior and self-assembled into fibers or film morphologies, depending on the conditions used. The second silk protein, ChryC2, self-assembled into nanofibrils and subsequently formed hydrogels. Circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy confirmed conformational changes of both proteins into beta sheet rich structures upon assembly. ChryC3 did not self-assemble into any morphology under the tested conditions. Thereby, through this work, it could be shown that recombinant lacewing silk proteins can be produced and further used for studying the fiber formation of lacewing egg stalks. MDPI 2017-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5485732/ /pubmed/28608840 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom7020043 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Neuenfeldt, Martin
Scheibel, Thomas
Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title_full Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title_fullStr Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title_full_unstemmed Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title_short Sequence Identification, Recombinant Production, and Analysis of the Self-Assembly of Egg Stalk Silk Proteins from Lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
title_sort sequence identification, recombinant production, and analysis of the self-assembly of egg stalk silk proteins from lacewing chrysoperla carnea
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5485732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28608840
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom7020043
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