ArticleBiophysical journal2003
The mechanical properties of hydrated intermediate filaments: insights from hagfish slime threads.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 263 citations in OpenAlex.
- Tailorable Hydrogel Fibers from High-Yield Recombinant Hagfish Intermediate Filament Proteins: A New Frontier in Biomimetic Materials.ACS omega · 2026Article
- It's not just snot! : Mucus: Nature's Multifaceted Secretion.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Design Principles for Deployable Fibers Inspired by Hagfish Defense.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- A dynamic biointerface in mussels mediated by a mechanoresponsive intermediate filament-based biopolymer.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Form and function in biological filaments: a physicist's review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Physics of unravelling and micromechanics of hagfish threads.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Engineered Recombinant Hagfish Intermediate Filament Proteins: Unraveling Domain Roles in Synthetic Fiber Formation and Mechanics.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Intermediate filaments spatially organize intracellular nanostructures to produce the bright structural blue of ribbontail stingrays across ontogeny.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
- Invasive mussels fashion silk-like byssus via mechanical processing of massive horizontally acquired coiled coils.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Comparative mucomic analysis of three functionally distinct Cornu aspersum Secretions.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Protein-Based Biological Materials: Molecular Design and Artificial Production.Chemical reviews · 2023Review
- Mechanisms of gill-clogging by hagfish slime.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- From Strain Stiffening to Softening-Rheological Characterization of Keratins 8 and 18 Networks Crosslinked via Electron Irradiation.Polymers · 2022Article
- The next generation of protein super-fibres: robust recombinant production and recovery of hagfish intermediate filament proteins with fibre spinning and mechanical-structural characterizations.Microbial biotechnology · 2021Article
- Review
- Bend, Push, Stretch: Remarkable Structure and Mechanics of Single Intermediate Filaments and Meshworks.Cells · 2021Review
- Structural heterogeneity of cellular K5/K14 filaments as revealed by cryo-electron microscopy.eLife · 2021Article
- Nanoscale Material Heterogeneity of Glowworm Capture Threads Revealed by AFM.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Nuclear Mechanotransduction in Skeletal Muscle.Cells · 2021Review
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Intermediate filaments (IFs) impart mechanical integrity to cells, yet IF mechanics are poorly understood. It is assumed that IFs in cells are as stiff as hard alpha-keratin, F-actin, and microtubules, but the high bending flexibility of IFs and the low stiffness of soft alpha-keratins suggest that hydrated IFs may be quite soft. To test this hypothesis, we measured the tensile mechanics of the keratin-like threads from hagfish slime, which are an ideal model for exploring the mechanics of IF bundles and IFs because they consist of tightly packed and aligned IFs. Tensile tests suggest that hydrated IF bundles possess low initial stiffness (E(i) = 6.4 MPa) and remarkable elasticity (up to strains of 0.34), which we attribute to soft elastomeric IF protein terminal domains in series with stiffer coiled coils. The high tensile strength (180 MPa) and toughness (130 MJ/m(3)) of IF bundles support the notion that IFs lend mechanical integrity to cells. Their long-range elasticity suggests that IFs may also allow cells to recover from large deformations. X-ray diffraction and congo-red staining indicate that post-yield deformation leads to an irreversible alpha-->beta conformational transition in IFs, which leads to plastic deformation, and may be used by cells as a mechanosensory cue.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.