Self-Assembly of RGD-Functionalized Recombinant Spider Silk Protein into Microspheres in Physiological Buffer and in the Presence of Hyaluronic Acid.

Biomaterials made of self-assembling protein building blocks are widely explored for biomedical applications, for example, as drug carriers, tissue engineering scaffolds, and functionalized coatings. It has previously been shown that a recombinant spider silk protein functionalized with a cell binding motif from fibronectin, FN-4RepCT (FN-silk), self-assembles into fibrillar structures at interfaces, i.e., membranes, fibers, or foams at liquid/air interfaces, and fibrillar coatings at liquid/solid interfaces. Recently, we observed that FN-silk also assembles into microspheres in the bulk of a physiological buffer (PBS) solution. Herein, we investigate the self-assembly process of FN-silk into microspheres in the bulk and how its progression is affected by the presence of hyaluronic acid (HA), both in solution and in a cross-linked HA hydrogel. Moreover, we characterize the size, morphology, mesostructure, and protein secondary structure of the FN-silk microspheres prepared in PBS and HA. Finally, we examine how the FN-silk microspheres can be used to mediate cell adhesion and spreading of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) during cell culture. These investigations contribute to our fundamental understanding of the self-assembly of silk protein into materials and demonstrate the use of silk microspheres as additives for cell culture applications.

Hierarchical propagation of structural features in protein nanomaterials.

Natural high-performance materials have inspired the exploration of novel materials from protein building blocks. The ability of proteins to self-organize into amyloid-like nanofibrils has opened an avenue to new materials by hierarchical assembly processes. As the mechanisms by which proteins form nanofibrils are becoming clear, the challenge now is to understand how the nanofibrils can be designed to form larger structures with defined order. We here report the spontaneous and reproducible formation of ordered microstructure in solution cast films from whey protein nanofibrils. The structural features are directly connected to the nanostructure of the protein fibrils, which is itself determined by the molecular structure of the building blocks. Hence, a hierarchical assembly process ranging over more than six orders of magnitude in size is described. The fibril length distribution is found to be the main determinant of the microstructure and the assembly process originates in restricted capillary flow induced by the solvent evaporation. We demonstrate that the structural features can be switched on and off by controlling the length distribution or the evaporation rate without losing the functional properties of the protein nanofibrils.

Structural characterisation of amyloid-like fibrils formed by an amyloidogenic peptide segment of ß-lactoglobulin.

Protein nanofibrils (PNFs) represent a promising class of biobased nanomaterials for biomedical and materials science applications. In the design of such materials, a fundamental understanding of the structure-function relationship at both molecular and nanoscale levels is essential. Here we report investigations of the nanoscale morphology and molecular arrangement of amyloid-like PNFs of a synthetic peptide fragment consisting of residues 11-20 of the protein ß-lactoglobulin (ß-LG11-20), an important model system for PNF materials. Nanoscale fibril morphology was analysed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) that indicates the presence of polymorphic self-assembly of protofilaments. However, observation of a single set of 13C and 15N resonances in the solid-state NMR spectra for the ß-LG11-20 fibrils suggests that the observed polymorphism originates from the assembly of protofilaments at the nanoscale but not from the molecular structure. The secondary structure and inter-residue proximities in the ß-LG11-20 fibrils were probed using NMR experiments of the peptide with 13C- and 15N-labelled amino acid residues at selected positions. We can conclude that the peptides form parallel ß-sheets, but the NMR data was inconclusive regarding inter-sheet packing. Molecular dynamics simulations confirm the stability of parallel ß-sheets and suggest two preferred modes of packing. Comparison of molecular dynamics models with NMR data and calculated chemical shifts indicates that both packing models are possible.

Analysis of XFEL serial diffraction data from individual crystalline fibrils.

Serial diffraction data collected at the Linac Coherent Light Source from crystalline amyloid fibrils delivered in a liquid jet show that the fibrils are well oriented in the jet. At low fibril concentrations, diffraction patterns are recorded from single fibrils; these patterns are weak and contain only a few reflections. Methods are developed for determining the orientation of patterns in reciprocal space and merging them in three dimensions. This allows the individual structure amplitudes to be calculated, thus overcoming the limitations of orientation and cylindrical averaging in conventional fibre diffraction analysis. The advantages of this technique should allow structural studies of fibrous systems in biology that are inaccessible using existing techniques.