Given their ephemeral nature, the preservation of historic silks can be problematic. Rapid, on-site condition monitoring would offer significant benefits to conservators and museum curators concerned with continued access to collections. In this paper, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) is investigated as a noninvasive approach to the characterization of silk fabrics and particularly for determin...

Components of silk including silk fibroin have long been used as anti-diabetic remedies in oriental medicine. However, detailed mechanisms underlying these antidiabetic effects remain unclear. In this study, we examined the anti-diabetic activity of silk fibroin hydrolysate (SFH) in C57BL/KsJ db/db (db/db) mice, a well-known animal model of non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. When the db/d...

A wide range of materials and scaffolding fabrication methods for bone tissue engineering have beenexplored recently. Fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) system appears to be a suitable system. By the exclusiveuse of biocompatible or bio-absorbable polymers and fibers, novel generation of scaffolds for applicationsin tissue engineering can be prepared. Mulberry Silk as highlighted...

Miscibility is an important issue in biopolymer blends for analysis of the behavior of polymer pairs through the detection of phase separation and improvement of the mechanical and physical properties of the blend. This study presents the formulation of a stable and one-phase mixture of collagen and regenerated silk fibroin (RSF), with the highest miscibility ratio between these two macromolecu...

Many studies have demonstrated that in vitro shear stress conditioning of endothelial cell-seeded small-diameter vascular grafts can improve cell retention and function. However, the laminar flow and pulsatile flow conditions which are commonly used in vascular tissue engineering and hemodynamic studies are quite different from the actual physiological pulsatile flow which is pulsatile in natur...

Silk consists of two types of proteins, silk fibroin and sericin. Sericin contributes about 20-30 per cent of total cocoon weight. It is characterized by its high content of serine and 18 amino acids, including essential amino acids. There are different methods of isolation of sericin from silk thread. Solubility, molecular weight, and gelling properties of sericin depend on the method of isola...

Silk fibroin hydrogels with tunable properties could be obtained from aqueous fibroin solutions (4.2 w/v %) in a short period of time. This was achieved by the addition of ethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (EGDE) into the reaction solution. Introduction of EGDE cross-links between the fibroin molecules decreases the mobility of the chains, which triggers the conformational transition from random...

Regenerated Bombyx mori silk fibers were spun from hexafluoro-isopropanol solution of silk fibroin sponge in methanol used as a coagulant solvent and then elongated in water. The stress-strain curves of the regenerated fibers changed dramatically depending on the draw ratio and the structure was studied by 13C CP/MAS NMR and X-ray diffraction methods. The patterns of 13C CP/MAS NMR spectra of t...

Electrospinning was used to fabricate non-woven nanofibrous tubular scaffolds from Bombyx mori silk fibroin using an all aqueous process. Cell studies and mechanical characterization tests were performed on the electrospun silk tubes to assess the viability of their usage in bioengineering small-diameter vascular grafts. Human endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells were successfully cultured...