Transient structures of keratins from hoof and horn influence their self association and supramolecular assemblies

Keratins as fibrous proteins, offer structural integrity to various tissues in providing the functional role of protection or load bearing. This work is a prelude to understand the structure - property correlation for a wide variety of keratins. The kinetics of aggregation of bovine hoof keratin (KF) and horn keratin (KR) were monitored by different biophysical methods. pH dependent studies indicated that initially both keratins existed in pre-aggregated form and the efficiency of aggregation decreased with increasing pH. The size of the aggregates was found to be larger in KF compared to KR. UV-vis and particle size analysis clearly revealed that the pre-aggregated forms of KF and KR dissociated to intermediate transient structures with smaller aggregate size, which acted as stronger nucleating agents for further self association of the keratins to form higher order supramolecular assemblies. Conformational analysis indicated that there was no significant conformational change during the aggregation of KF and KR. Morphology of the KF aggregates showed fractal arrangement while KR aggregates formed an ordered structure with no particular arrangement. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report which shows an interesting and unique observation on changes in the structure during self-association of keratins.