Investigating spider silk self-assembly via liquid-liquid phase separation

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This year significant progress was achieved on the work related to the Kakenhi grant. The experimental work related to the investigation on MaSp1 assembly (in isolation) has been completed, including work on the 2D protein structure as well as real-time characterization of the complete self-assembly process at the mesoscale. These results have been written up in a paper for publication.Work on the optimization of conditions for the composite function of the different MaSp variants have been carried out, which were successful on the small-scale, however the large-scale fiber spinning and characterization has not yet been successfully completed. The analysis of the array of MaSp2 variants with variations in the repetitive domain amino acid motifs have been carried, including data collection and analysis at SPring-8 using the SEC-SAXS system, have been performed; in addition, experiments exploring the effect of mutations on reversibility/efficiency of LLPS were carried out, although these have not been finalized. The results of these works are currently being written up for publication.Three peer-reviewed papers related to spider silk structure/function were successfully published (including 1 as co-first author), and conferences were attended.