title: Design and production of a chimeric resilin-, elastin-, and collagen-like engineered polypeptide.
abstract: Protein-inspired biomaterials have gained great interest as an alternative to synthetic polymers, in particular, for their potential use as biomedical devices. The potential inspiring models are mainly proteins able to confer mechanical properties to tissues and organs, such as elasticity (elastin, resilin, spider silk) and strength (collagen, silk). The proper combination of repetitive sequences, each of them derived from different proteins, represents a useful tool for obtaining biomaterials with tailored mechanical properties and biological functions. In this report we describe the design, the production, and the preliminary characterization of a chimeric polypeptide, based on sequences derived from the highly resilient proteins resilin and elastin and from collagen-like sequences. The results show that the obtained chimeric recombinant material exhibits promising self-assembling properties. Young's modulus of the fibers was determined by AFM image analysis and lies in the range of 0.1-3 MPa in agreement with the expectations for elastin-like and resilin-like materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry Antonio M. Tamburrro, University of Basilicata , 85100 Potenza, Italy.
authors.forename: Angelo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bracalello
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Santopietro
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vassalli
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Marletta
authors.forename: Rosanna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Del Gaudio
authors.forename: Brigida
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bochicchio
authors.forename: Antonietta
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pepe
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D015153:Blotting, Western; D002942:Circular Dichroism; D003094:Collagen / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D017931:DNA Primers; D004549:Elastin / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D018625:Microscopy, Atomic Force; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D015202:Protein Engineering; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D017931:DNA Primers; D019476:Insect Proteins; C030951:resilin; D003094:Collagen; D004549:Elastin