Change of Silk Fibroin Molecular Mass During Dissolution in Ionic Liquids
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Fibre Chemistry, Vol. 52, No. 3, September, 2020 (Russian Original No. 3, May-June, 2020)
CHANGE OF SILK FIBROIN MOLECULAR MASS DURING DISSOLUTION IN IONIC LIQUIDS A. I. Susanin,* E. S. Sashina,** N. P. Novoselov,*** and V. V. Zakharov****
UDC 547.962.94:542.61:544.122.4
Silk fibroin is a unique protein polymer with broad potential for medical applications. Fibroin is significantly degraded and the materials obtained from it have poor mechanical characteristics if silk fiber is dissolved in traditional solvents. The present work used gel electrophoresis to study the dissolution of fibroin in ionic liquids. Fibroin degradation was shown to increase with increasing temperature and dissolution time. The optimal conditions for dissolution that allowed the heavy and light chains of fibroin to be preserved intact were proposed.
The biopolymer fibroin is the basic structural component of silk fiber and possesses unique properties such as biocompatibility [1-3], biodegradability [4], and excellent physicomechanical parameters [5]. Fibroin is dissolved in various organic and inorganic solvents and then regenerated to produce promising materials for use in medicine and biotechnology [6-9]. The basic requirement for a solvent is its ability to convert fibroin from the crystalline β-structure characteristic of silk fiber into a soluble form. However, the used solvents have several disadvantages that limit their use on industrial scales, i.e., the thermal instability of N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide [10], the toxicity and long dissolution time in hexafluoroisopropanol [11], and the lengthy and resource-intensive dialysis from aqueous solutions of inorganic salts [12]. All this hinders the design of a continuous process for producing regenerated materials based on fibroin. Moreover, the fibers and films obtained from such solutions have poor physicomechanical characteristics [13-22]. Recently, ionic liquids (ILs) were proposed and used as promising solvents for fibroin [8, 12, 23]. ILs are salts with melting points
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