Bombyx mori (silkworm) silk proteins have been utilized as unique biomaterials for various medical applications. To develop a novel affinity silk material, we generated a transgenic silkworm that spins silk protein containing the fibroin L-chain linked with the single-chain variable fragment (scFv) as a fusion protein. Previously, the scFv-conjugated "affinity" silk powder specifically immunopr...

Glycyland alanyl-tRNA synthetases have been purified from an extract of Bombyx mori posterior silk glands by a procedure that allows for the simultaneous isolation of both enzymes. Glycyl-tRNA synthetase is a dimer of M, = 160,000 consisting of similar or identical subunits, whereas alanyl-tRNA synthetase is a monomer of M, = 110,000 to 116,000. The abundance of these two enzymes in the posteri...

Hydrogels are an attractive class of tunable material platforms that, combined with their structural and functional likeness to biological environments, have a diversity of applications in bioengineering. Several polymers, natural and synthetic, can be used, the material selection being based on the required functional characteristics of the prepared hydrogels. Silk fibroin (SF) is an attractiv...

Additive Manufacturing In article 2202869, Bernhard Wolfrum and co-workers develop an on-demand drug release system by using inkjet-printed silk fibroin carbon materials for the fabrication of microelectrode arrays. The flexible silk–carbon arrays enable in vitro extracellular recordings cardiac action potentials as well localized chemical stimulation.

A locus responsible for the Nd-s mutation of the silkworm, Bombyx mori, has been mapped very close to or within the fibroin light (L) chain gene on the 14th chromosome (Takei, F., K. Kimura, S. Mizuno, T. Yamamoto, and K. Shimura, 1984, Jpn. J. Genet., 59:307-313). A strain of B. mori carrying the homozygous Nd-sD mutation (Nd-sD/Nd-sD; Nd-sD is allelic to Nd-s) secretes less than 0.3% of fibro...

This study aimed to prepare silk fibroin (SF) films loaded with honeysuckle flowers extract (HFE) for inducing apoptosis of HeLa cells. We mixed solution of SF and HFE by air-drying for preparing the honeysuckle flowers extract loaded silk fibroin (SFH) films. The physical properties including morphologies, contact angle, roughness, and Z range were characterized. MTS assay and fluorescence mic...

Transcription of the Bombyx mori fibroin gene in a posterior silk gland extract can be separated into three functional steps on the basis of sensitivity to Sarkosyl: 1) formation of an initiation complex, which is blocked by 0.025% Sarkosyl; 2) conversion of the initiation complex to an elongation complex, a step sensitive to 0.05% Sarkosyl; 3) the subsequent elongation of RNA chain which occur...

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for texture analysis based on artificial crawler model. Our method assumes that each agent can interact with the environment and each other. The evolution process converges to an equilibrium state according to the set of rules. For each textured image, the feature vector is composed by signatures of the live agents curve at each time. Experimental resu...

A small angle neutron scattering study reveals the structure of silk-fibroin sophorolipid composites to be interpenetrated, fibrous networks with individual components retaining their initial structures.

Platinum(iv) complexes take advantage of the exclusive conditions that occur within the tumor to carry out their cytotoxic activity. On the other hand, silk fibroin has natural properties which make it very interesting as a biomaterial: high biocompatibility, biodegradability, low immunogenicity, high cellular penetration capacity and high reactive surface. Herein we report the preparation of s...