Abstract
Functional amyloid fibers are crucial in melanogenesis, but their roles are incompletely understood. In particular, their relationship with intrinsic spin characters of melanin remains unexplored. Here, we show that adding an amyloid scaffold greatly augments the spin density in synthetic melanin. It also brings about concurrent alterations in water dispersibility, bandgaps, and radical scavenging properties of the synthetic melanin, which facilitates its applications in solar water remediation and protection of human keratinocytes from UV irradiation. This work provides implications in the unrevealed role of functional amyloid in melanogenesis and in the origin of the superiority of natural melanin toward its synthetic variants in terms of the spin-related properties.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 38335-38345 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 32 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 16 Aug 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 American Chemical Society.
Keywords
- cytoprotection
- functional amyloids
- melanins
- radical scavenging
- water remediation