Fig. 4: Physical and mechanical modifications of silk.
From: Silk-based biomaterial scaffolds for dental tissue regeneration
a Schematic representation of various gelation and chemical crosslinking strategies employed for the fabrication of silk-based scaffolds intended for dental tissue regeneration. b Summarization of different design parameters and reaction-specific aspects that can be controlled to obtain tunable biomedical properties171. c Under alkaline conditions, serine residues in SF undergo nucleophilic substitution with chloroacetic acid, resulting in site-specific carboxylation of hydroxyl groups171. d Illustrates diazonium coupling, in which aromatic amines are converted into diazonium salts and subsequently react with tyrosine residues along the SF backbone to form covalent azo linkages. e Carbodiimide coupling: Amino acids bearing carboxyl (-COOH) or amine (-NH₂) groups (e.g., aspartic acid, glutamic acid, and lysine) can be crosslinked with complementary amine- or carboxyl-containing ligands in the presence of 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxy succinimide (NHS) under mildly acidic conditions (pH ~6).
