The wild silkworm Bombyx mandarina is widely believed to be an ancestor of the domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori. Silkworms are often used as a model for studying the mechanism of species domestication. Here, we performed transcriptome sequencing of the wild silkworm using an Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. We produced 100,004,078 high-quality reads and assembled them into 50,773 contigs with an ...

This work validates an in vitro observation that silk peptides derived from the α-chymotrypsin digestion of fibroin heavy chain promote wound healing properties. A molecular level evidence of binding of these peptide fragments to growth factors, their receptors and the corresponding ligand-receptor complexes has been provided. The strengths of interactions and possible conformational changes ca...

Achieving a high number of inter-pore channels and a nanofibrous structure similar to that of the extracellular matrix remains a challenge in the preparation of Bombyx mori silk fibroin (BSF) scaffolds for tissue engineering. In this study, Antheraea pernyi silk fibroin (ASF) micro/nano fibers with an average diameter of 324 nm were fabricated by electrospinning from an 8 wt % ASF solution in h...

Films of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) are usually brittle and weak, which prevents its wide application as a structural material. To improve the mechanical properties of RSF film, uniaxial extension under swollen conditions was employed to introduce preferred orientation of molecular chains of silk fibroin. Such a prestretching treatment resulted in the strain at break, ultimate stress, Young...

The foregoing experiments show that products of the hydrolysis of silk that consist of peptides having, from amino nitrogen determinations, molecular weights from about 600 to 1000 were capable of inhibiting the reactions of precipitin sera for silk. From the results it may reasonably be inferred that silk fibroin contains determinant structures not larger than the peptides examined, which prob...

ABSTRACT: Silk is a biomaterial which fibrous protein with remarkable mechanical properties produced in fibre formed by silkworms and spiders. Apart from being fine biomaterial, it has also been used since past few centuries as sutures medical surgeries due to its advantages healing antimicrobial activity avoid infection. material successful various modern areas.1 Here the researchers attempt s...

We investigate the linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties as well as the reversibility of strain-stiffening behavior of silk fibroin gels. The gels are prepared from 4.2w/v% fibroin solution in the presence of butanediol diglycidyl ether and N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED) as a cross-linker and catalyst, respectively. By changing the concentration of TEMED in the gelation sys...