How Protein Materials Balance Strength, Robustness And Adaptability
Name
Buehler_How protein.pdf
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1.48 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9bc3bf089e1950b4fe7c0b6c4a953a1f
Author(s)
Buehler, Markus J.
Yung, Yu Ching
Date Issued
January 2010
Journal
HFSP Journal
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Citation
Buehler, Markus J., and Yu Ching Yung. “How protein materials balance strength, robustness, and adaptability.” HFSP Journal 4.1 (2010): 26-40.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Proteins form the basis of a wide range of biological materials such as hair, skin, bone, spider silk, or cells, which play an important role in providing key functions to biological systems. The focus of this article is to discuss how protein materials are capable of balancing multiple, seemingly incompatible properties such as strength, robustness, and adaptability. To illustrate this, we review bottom-up materiomics studies focused on the mechanical behavior of protein materials at multiple scales, from nano to macro. We focus on alpha-helix based intermediate filament proteins as a model system to explain why the utilization of hierarchical structural features is vital to their ability to combine strength, robustness, and adaptability. Experimental studies demonstrating the activation of angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, are presented as an example of how adaptability of structure in biological tissue is achieved through changes in gene expression that result in an altered material structure. We analyze the concepts in light of the universality and diversity of the structural makeup of protein materials and discuss the findings in the context of potential fundamental evolutionary principles that control their nanoscale structure. We conclude with a discussion of multiscale science in biology and de novo materials design.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Computational Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.2976/1.3267779
