pH-sulfate synergy regulates processing and mechanics of mussel byssus protein condensates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fluid protein condensates are used as precursor phases for fabricating extracellular protein-based materials including elastin, spider silk, and mussel byssus. The byssus, utilized by mussels for anchoring in marine environments, consists of tough, self-healing adhesive fibers. Byssus formation involves the secretion of protein condensate droplets under acidic conditions that subsequently solidify under basic seawater conditions. We currently have a poor understanding of the physicochemical triggers and molecular-level interactions at play, in particular the role of pH and sulfate anions previously identified during native fabrication. Here, we investigated the pH and sulfate-dependent structural and mechanical response of condensates made from a recombinant byssus protein (mfp-1) using optical tweezers microrheology, FRAP, confocal Raman spectroscopy, NMR, and cryo-EM. We found that the protein concentration in condensates increased, and the viscoelastic response became more rigid under basic conditions in the presence of sulfate ions compared with chloride ions, consistent with spectroscopic analysis indicating different molecular interactions under these different chemical conditions. These studies highlight the crucial interplay between sulfate anions and pH in tuning condensate viscoelasticity via control of intermolecular interactions, providing insights into the natural byssus formation process with relevance for bio-inspired materials processing of sustainable plastics and materials for tissue engineering.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".