title: Designing silk-silk protein alloy materials for biomedical applications.
abstract: Fibrous proteins display different sequences and structures that have been used for various applications in biomedical fields such as biosensors, nanomedicine, tissue regeneration, and drug delivery. Designing materials based on the molecular-scale interactions between these proteins will help generate new multifunctional protein alloy biomaterials with tunable properties. Such alloy material systems also provide advantages in comparison to traditional synthetic polymers due to the materials biodegradability, biocompatibility, and tenability in the body. This article used the protein blends of wild tussah silk (Antheraea pernyi) and domestic mulberry silk (Bombyx mori) as an example to provide useful protocols regarding these topics, including how to predict protein-protein interactions by computational methods, how to produce protein alloy solutions, how to verify alloy systems by thermal analysis, and how to fabricate variable alloy materials including optical materials with diffraction gratings, electric materials with circuits coatings, and pharmaceutical materials for drug release and delivery. These methods can provide important information for designing the next generation multifunctional biomaterials based on different protein alloys.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University; Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Rowan University; Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University; hu@rowan.edu.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Solomon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Duki
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Forys
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University; Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hettinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Buchicchio
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University; Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Tabbetha
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dobbins
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, Rowan University; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Rowan University.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry*; D012831:Bombyx; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D009036:Moths; D047011:Silk / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D019476:Insect Proteins; D047011:Silk