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Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web
Of the 7–8 silk fibers making up an orb-web only the hierarchical structural organization of semicrystalline radial fibers -composed of major ampullate silk- has been studied in detail, given its fascinating mechanical features. While major ampullate silk’s nanofibrillar morphology is well establish...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7584646/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33097740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74638-0 |
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author | Riekel, Christian Burghammer, Manfred Rosenthal, Martin |
author_facet | Riekel, Christian Burghammer, Manfred Rosenthal, Martin |
author_sort | Riekel, Christian |
collection | PubMed |
description | Of the 7–8 silk fibers making up an orb-web only the hierarchical structural organization of semicrystalline radial fibers -composed of major ampullate silk- has been studied in detail, given its fascinating mechanical features. While major ampullate silk’s nanofibrillar morphology is well established, knowhow on mesoscale (> 50–100 nm) assembly and its contribution to mechanical performance is limited. Much less is known on the hierarchical structural organization of other, generally less crystalline fibers contributing to an orb-webs’ function. Here we show by scanning X-ray micro&nanodiffraction that two fully amorphous, fine silk fibers from the center of an orb-web have different mesoscale features. One of the fibers has a fibrillar composite structure resembling stiff egg case silk. The other fiber has a skin–core structure based on a nanofibrillar ribbon wound around a disordered core. A fraction of nanofibrils appears to have assembled into mesoscale fibrils. This fiber becomes readily attached to the coat of major ampullate silk fibers. We observe that a detached fiber has ripped out the glycoprotein skin-layer containing polyglycine II nanocrystallites. The anchoring of the fiber in the coat suggests that it could serve for strengthening the tension and cohesion of major ampullate silk fibers. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7584646 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75846462020-10-27 Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web Riekel, Christian Burghammer, Manfred Rosenthal, Martin Sci Rep Article Of the 7–8 silk fibers making up an orb-web only the hierarchical structural organization of semicrystalline radial fibers -composed of major ampullate silk- has been studied in detail, given its fascinating mechanical features. While major ampullate silk’s nanofibrillar morphology is well established, knowhow on mesoscale (> 50–100 nm) assembly and its contribution to mechanical performance is limited. Much less is known on the hierarchical structural organization of other, generally less crystalline fibers contributing to an orb-webs’ function. Here we show by scanning X-ray micro&nanodiffraction that two fully amorphous, fine silk fibers from the center of an orb-web have different mesoscale features. One of the fibers has a fibrillar composite structure resembling stiff egg case silk. The other fiber has a skin–core structure based on a nanofibrillar ribbon wound around a disordered core. A fraction of nanofibrils appears to have assembled into mesoscale fibrils. This fiber becomes readily attached to the coat of major ampullate silk fibers. We observe that a detached fiber has ripped out the glycoprotein skin-layer containing polyglycine II nanocrystallites. The anchoring of the fiber in the coat suggests that it could serve for strengthening the tension and cohesion of major ampullate silk fibers. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC7584646/ /pubmed/33097740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74638-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Riekel, Christian Burghammer, Manfred Rosenthal, Martin Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title | Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title_full | Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title_fullStr | Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title_full_unstemmed | Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title_short | Mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
title_sort | mesoscale structures in amorphous silks from a spider’s orb-web |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7584646/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33097740 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74638-0 |
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