Protein hydrogels have attracted considerable interest due to their potential applications in biomedical engineering as well as basic biological studies. Amongst these biomaterials, most are engineered from non-globular elastomeric proteins that behave like entropic springs, such as those based on elastin, resilin, collagen and abductin. A large number of proteins, such as the giant muscle protein titin and many extracellular matrix proteins, are tandem modular proteins that consist of many individually folded functional domains to confer required biological functionalities and mechanical properties for various tissues. Experimental efforts to incorporate such tandem modular proteins into functional biomaterials have just begun. Here we report our latest progress in this exciting new area. Using proteins with defined mechanical properties as building blocks, we have engineered highly elastic and tough protein hydrogels, as well as protein hydrogels with dynamically tunable mechanical properties. The macroscopic mechanical properties of these hydrogels correlate well with the nanomechanical properties of protein building blocks, bridging the gap between protein mechanics at the single molecule level and mechanics of biomaterials at the macroscopic level. The insights revealed from these experiments will help tailor design protein biomaterials for specific biomedical applications.

Elastomeric protein-based hydrogels with tailored mechanical properties

254th National Meeting (2017)

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