Structure and Identification of Solenin: A Novel Fibrous Protein from Bivalve Solen grandis Ligament

Abstract EN

Fibrous proteins, which derived from natural sources, have been acting as templates for the production of new materials for decades, and most of them have been modified to improve mechanical performance.

Insight into the structures of fibrous proteins is a key step for fabricating of bioinspired materials.

Here, we revealed the microstructure of a novel fibrous protein: solenin from Solen grandis ligament and identified the protein by MALDI-TOF-TOF-MS and LC-MS-MS analyses.

We found that the protein fiber has no hierarchical structure and is homologous to keratin type II cytoskeletal 1 and type I cytoskeletal 9-like, containing “SGGG,” “SYGSGGG,” “GS,” and “GSS” repeat sequences.

Secondary structure analysis by FTIR shows that solenin is composed of 41.8% β-sheet, 16.2% β-turn, 26.5% α-helix, and 9.8% disordered structure.

We believe that the β-sheet structure and those repeat sequences which form “glycine loops” may give solenin excellence elastic and flexible properties to withstand tensile stress caused by repeating opening and closing of the shell valves in vivo.

This paper contributes a novel fibrous protein for the protein materials world.