On the roles of the alanine and serine in the β-sheet structure of fibroin

Abstract

In its silk II form, fibroin is almost exclusively formed from layers of β-sheets, rich in glycine, alanine and serine. Reported here are computational results on fibroin models at semi-empirical, DFT levels of theory and molecular dynamics (MD) for (Gly)10, (Gly-Ala)5 and (Gly-Ser)5 decapeptides. While alanine and serine introduce steric repulsions, the alanine side-chain adds to the rigidity of the sheet, allowing it to maintain a properly pleated structure even in a single β-sheet, and thus avoiding two alternative conformations which would interfere with the formation of the multi-layer pleated-sheet structure. The role of the serine is proposed to involve modulation of the hydrophobicity in order to construct the supramolecular assembly as opposed to random precipitation due to hydrophobicity.

Keywords: DFT; Fibroin; Molecular modeling; Semiempirical; Silk II; β-sheet.