A Facile Fabrication Strategy for Patterning Protein Chain Conformation in Silk Materials

Patterning of the secondary structure of silk films is achieved on the micrometer scale using a soft lithographic technique, as illustrated in the figure. The alternating areas of silk I and silk II structure have different mechanical, surface, and solubility properties but nominally the same chemical composition. This technique will enable the development of other tailored protein materials with selectively transformed localized secondary structure.