Related papers: Molecular spring: from spider silk to silkworm sil…
We deduce a microstructure inspired model for humidity and temperature effects on the mechanical response of spider silks, modelled as a composite material with a hard crystalline and a soft amorphous region. Water molecules decrease the…
We analyze the wide angle x-ray scattering from oriented spider silk fibers in terms of a quantitative scattering model, including both structural and statistical parameters of the $\beta$-sheet crystallites of spider silk in the amorphous…
Spider silk possesses unique mechanical properties like large extensibility, high tensile strength, super-contractility, etc. Understanding these mechanical responses require characterization of the rheological properties of silk beyond the…
Spider silk is a remarkable biomaterial with exceptional stiffness, strength, and toughness stemming from a unique microstructure. While recent studies show that silk fibers exhibit plasticity, hysteresis, and recovery under cyclic loading,…
The spider silk is one of the most interesting bio-materials investigated in the last years. One of the main reasons that brought scientists to study this organized system is its high level of resistance if compared to other artificial…
Spider dragline silk is one of the toughest materials known and understanding the hierarchical structure is a critical component in the efforts to connect structure to function. In this paper, we take the first step in elucidating the…
Spider capture silk is a biomaterial with both high strength and high elasticity, but the structural design principle underlying these remarkable properties is still unknown. It was revealed recently by atomic force microscopy that, an…
Spider silks are remarkable materials characterized by superb mechanical properties such as strength, extensibility and lightweightedness. Yet, to date, limited models are available to fully explore sequence-property relationships for…
Spider silk is a remarkable example of bio-material with superior mechanical characteristics. Its multilevel structural organization of dragline and viscid silk leads to unusual and tunable properties, extensively studied from a…
Spider dragline silk shows well-known outstanding mechanical properties. However, its sigmoidal shape of the measured stress-strain curves (i.e. the yield) can not be described by classical polymer theories and recent hierarchical chain…
The remarkable mechanical properties of spider silk, including its tensile strength and extensibility, are primarily governed by the repetitive regions of the proteins that constitute the fiber, the major ampullate spidroins (MaSps).…
Spider silk is biocompatible, biodegradable, and rivals some of the best synthetic materials in terms of strength and toughness. Despite extensive research, comprehensive experimental evidence of the formation and morphology of its internal…
We investigate the formation of beta-sheet structures in proteins without taking into account specific sequence-dependent hydrophobic interactions. To accomplish this, we introduce a model which explicitly incorporates both solvation…
Silk is a semi-dilute solution of randomly coiled associating polypeptide chains that crystallise following the stretch-induced disruption, in the strong extensional flow of extrusion, of the solvation shell around their amino acids. We…
Multiscale phenomena exhibit complex structure-function relationships, and predicting their macroscopic behavior requires deducing differential equations at different scales. The complexity of these equations and the number of essential…
We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…
Mechanical stretching of secondary structures is studied through molecular dynamics simulations of a Go-like model. Force vs. displacement curves are studied as a function of the stiffness and velocity of the pulling device. The succession…
Exploring the protein-folding problem has been a long-standing challenge in molecular biology. Protein folding is highly dependent on folding of secondary structures as the way to pave a native folding pathway. Here, we demonstrate that a…
We study the yielding transition of a two dimensional amorphous system under shear by using a mesoscopic elasto-plastic model. The model combines a full (tensorial) description of the elastic interactions in the system, and the possibility…
For small tension the response of a solid to an applied stress is given by Hooke's law. Outside this linear regime the relation between stress and strain is no longer universal and at present there is no satisfactory insight on how to…