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 Il 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.