From ultra-soft slime to hard alpha-keratins: the many lives of intermediate filaments
by Fudge, D.S., Winegard, T., Ewoldt, R.H., Beriault, D., Szewciw, L. and McKinley, G.H.
Intermediate filaments are filaments 10nm in diameter that make up an
important component of the cytoskeleton in most metazoan taxa. They are
most familiar for their role as the fibrous component of alpha-keratins
such as skin, hair, nail, and horn but are also abundant within living
cells. Although they are almost exclusively intracellular in their
distribution, in the case of the defensive slime produced by hagfishes,
they are secreted. This article surveys the impressive diversity of
biomaterials that animals construct from intermediate filaments and
will focus on the mechanisms by which the mechanical properties of
these materials are achieved. Hagfish slime is a dilute network of
hydrated mucus and compliant intermediate filament bundles with
ultrasoft material properties. Within the cytoplasm of living cells,
networks of intermediate filaments form soft gels whose elasticity
arises via entropic mechanisms. Single intermediate filaments or
bundles are also elastic, but substantially stiffer, exhibiting modulus
values similar to that of rubber. Hard alpha-keratins like wool are
stiffer still, an effect that is likely achieved via dehydration of the
intermediate filaments in these epidermal appendages. The diverse
mechanisms described here have been employed by animals to generate
materials with stiffness values that span an impressive eleven orders
of magnitude.