Fig. 5: Nanomechanical analysis of silk fibroin assembly states.

a Comparison of the height, deformation and elastic modulus of silk protein monomers, compartments, nanofibrils and microfibers. b Quantitative analysis of the elastic modulus (GPa) of the different assemblies. The elastic modulus rises as the β-sheet content increases. The error bars indicate the standard deviation of the elastic modulus sampled from several AFM images. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.