New Publication in Ultramicroscopy
The lab has new paper out in Ultramicroscopy! Led by recent PhD graduate student Hannah Johnson, the paper lays out a protocol for NS-TEM of native spider silk protein micelle-like assemblies extracted directly from the spinning dope of spiders. Spider silk proteins prior to spinning are very sensitive to aggregation and preserving the native structure under EM staining conditions is challenging. Commonly used stains such uranyl acetate induce fibril formation because the stain is acidic and acidic pH is known to trigger fiber formation. By utilizing ammonium molybdate stain at pH 7, we were able to show that native silk superstructures could be preserved that closely matched our previously published cryoEM tomography data. Silk protein micelle pre-assembly is critical for fiber formation and we anticipate that this protocol will be useful for the characterization of other spider and silkworm silk dopes and those attempting to recapitulate this pre-assembly in recombinant silk systems. The published manuscript can be found here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304399125000233
