Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
J Struct Biol. 2011 Dec;176(3):340-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2011.08.010. Epub 2011 Aug 24.
Feather keratin has a composite structure with a filament-matrix texture, and transmission electron microscopy studies of thin transverse sections of feather rachis by Rogers and Filshie in the early 1960s showed that the filaments have a strong tendency to form sheets. Potentially this could account for the unusual X-ray diffraction pattern noted by Bear and Rugo in the early 1950s, which was interpreted by them as indicating a two-dimensional net structure. Although it is 50years since these major advances were made the possibility of extracting information on the nature of the filament packing from the diffraction pattern has never been explored. The present contribution shows how, when taken together with current information on the nature of β-sheets in feather keratin, certain features of the X-ray diffraction pattern can now be used to determine the likely arrangement of the filaments in the sheet.
羽毛角蛋白具有纤维-基质的复合结构，20 世纪 60 年代初，罗杰斯（Rogers）和菲尔希（Filshie）通过对羽毛羽轴的薄横切片进行透射电子显微镜研究，发现纤维有强烈的形成薄片的趋势。这可能解释了 20 世纪 50 年代贝尔（Bear）和鲁戈（Rugo）注意到的不寻常的 X 射线衍射模式，他们将其解释为表明存在二维网络结构。尽管这些重大进展已经过去了 50 年，但从未有人探索过从衍射模式中提取纤维排列信息的可能性。本研究表明，当与目前关于羽毛角蛋白β-折叠的性质的信息结合使用时，现在可以利用 X 射线衍射模式的某些特征来确定薄片中纤维的可能排列方式。
