TY - JOUR AU - Perticaroli, Stefania AU - Ehlers, Georg AU - Jalarvo, Niina AU - Katsaras, John AU - Nickels, Jonathan D. TI - Elasticity and Inverse Temperature Transition in Elastin JO - The journal of physical chemistry letters VL - 6 SN - 1948-7185 CY - Washington, DC PB - ACS M1 - FZJ-2015-05802 SP - 4018–4025 PY - 2015 AB - Elastin is a structural protein and biomaterial that provides elasticity and resilience to a range of tissues. This work provides insights into the elastic properties of elastin and its peculiar inverse temperature transition (ITT). These features are dependent on hydration of elastin and are driven by a similar mechanism of hydrophobic collapse to an entropically favorable state. Using neutron scattering, we quantify the changes in the geometry of molecular motions above and below the transition temperature, showing a reduction in the displacement of water-induced motions upon hydrophobic collapse at the ITT. We also measured the collective vibrations of elastin gels as a function of elongation, revealing no changes in the spectral features associated with local rigidity and secondary structure, in agreement with the entropic origin of elasticity. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000363083900005 C6 - pmid:26722771 DO - DOI:10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b01890 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/255669 ER -