Keratin

Distinguish from kerogen. Keratins are a family of fibrous structural proteins; tough and insoluble, they form the hard but nonmineralized structures found in reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals. The baleen plates of filter-feeding whales are made of them, as are human fingernails. Keratins are also found in the gastrointestinal tracts of many animals, including roundworms. They are rivaled in biological toughness only by chitin, a cellulose-like polymer of glucosamine and the main constituent of the exoskeletons of arthropods. There are various types of keratins, even within a single animal. Some infectious fungi, such as those which cause athlete's foot and ringworm, feed on keratin. The silk fibroins produced by insects and spiders are often classified as keratins, though it is unclear whether they are phylogenetically related to vertebrate keratins.

Keratin in the Animal Kingdom

Cells in the epidermis contain a structural matrix of keratin which makes this outermost layer of the skin almost waterproof, and along with collagen and elastin, gives skin its strength. Rubbing and pressure cause keratin to proliferate with the formation of protective calluses — useful for athletes and on the fingertips of musicians who play stringed instruments. Keratinized epidermal cells are constantly shed and replaced (see dandruff).

In mammals there are soft epithelial keratins, the cytokeratins, and harder hair keratins. As certain skin cells differentiate and become cornified, pre-keratin polypeptides are incorporated into intermediate filaments. Eventually the nucleus and cytoplasmic organelles disappear, metabolism ceases and cells undergo a programmed death as they become fully keratinized.

Keratins are the main constituent of structures that grow from the skin: the α-keratins in the hair (including wool), horns, nails, claws and hooves of mammals and the harder β-keratins in the scales and claws of reptiles, their shells (chelonians, such as tortoise, turtle, terrapin), and in the feathers, beaks, and claws of birds. Although it is now difficult to be certain, the scales, claws, some protective armour and the beaks of dinosaurs would, almost certainly, have been composed of a type of keratin. In Crossopterygian fish, the outer layer of cosmoid scales was keratin.

These hard, integumentary structures are formed by intercellular cementing of fibers formed from the dead, cornified cells generated by specialized beds deep within the skin. Hair grows continuously and feathers moult and regenerate. The constituent proteins may be phylogenetically homologous but differ somewhat in chemical structure and supermolecular organization. The evolutionary relationships are complex and only partially known. Multiple genes have been identified for the β-keratins in feathers, and this is probably characteristic of all keratins.

Molecular biology and biochemistry

The properties which make structural proteins like keratins useful depend on their supermolecular aggregation. These depend on the properties of the individual polypeptide strands, which depend in turn on their amino acid composition and sequence. The α-helix and β-sheet motifs, and disulfide bridges, are crucial to the conformations of globular, functional proteins like enzymes, many of which operate semi-independently, but they take on a completely dominant role in the architecture and aggregation of keratins.

Keratins contain a high proportion of the smallest of the 20 amino acids, glycine, whose "side group" is a single hydrogen atom; also the next smallest, alanine, with a small and uncharged methyl group. In the case of β-sheets, this allows sterically-unhindered hydrogen bonding between the amino and carboxyl groups of peptide bonds on adjacent protein chains, facilitating their close alignment and strong binding. Fibrous keratin molecules can twist around each other to form helical intermediate filaments.

Limited interior space is the reason why the triple helix of the (unrelated) structural protein collagen, found in skin, cartilage and bone, likewise has a high percentage of glycine. The connective tissue protein elastin also has a high percentage of both glycine and alanine. Silk fibroin, considered a β-keratin, can have these two as 75-80% of the total, with 10-15% serine, with the rest having bulky side groups. The chains are antiparallel, with an alternating C → N orientation.^* A preponderance of amino acids with small, unreactive side groups is characteristic of structural proteins, for which H-bonded close packing is more important than chemical specificity.

In addition to intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonds, keratins have large amounts of the sulfur-containing amino acid cysteine, required for the disulfide bridges that confer additional strength and rigidity by permanent, thermally-stable crosslinking — a role sulfur bridges also play in vulcanized rubber. Human hair is approximately 14% cysteine. The pungent smells of burning hair and rubber are due to the sulfur compounds formed. Extensive disulfide bonding contributes to the insolubility of keratins, except in dissociating or reducing agents such as urea.

The more flexible and elastic keratins of hair have fewer interchain disulfide bridges than the keratins in mammalian fingernails, hooves and claws (homologous structures), which are harder and more like their analogs in other vertebrate classes. Hair and other α-keratins consist of α-helically-coiled single protein strands (with regular intra-chain H-bonding), which are then further twisted into superhelical ropes that may be further coiled. The β-keratins of reptiles and birds have β-pleated sheets twisted together, then stabilized and hardened by disulfide bridges.

Silk found in insect pupae, and in spider webs and egg casings, also has twisted β-pleated sheets incorporated into fibers wound into larger supermolecular aggregates. The structure of the spinnerets on spiders’ tails, and the contributions of their interior glands, provide remarkable control of fast extrusion. Spider silk is typically about 1 to 2 micrometres (µm) thick, compared with about 60 µm for human hair, and more for some mammals. (Hair, or fur, occurs only in mammals.) The biologically and commercially useful properties of silk fibers depend on the organization of multiple adjacent protein chains into hard, crystalline regions of varying size, alternating with flexible, amorphous regions where the chains are randomly coiled.^* A somewhat analogous situation occurs with synthetic polymers such as nylon, developed as a silk substitute. Silk from the hornet cocoon contains doublets about 10 µm across, with cores and coating, and may be arranged in up to 10 layers; also in plaques of variable shape. Adult hornets also use silk as a glue, as do spiders.

Diseases caused by mutations in the keratin genes

References

World Book Encyclopedia (1998)

External links

Keratins | Cytoskeleton

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Keratin

Keratin in the Animal Kingdom

Molecular biology and biochemistry

Diseases caused by mutations in the keratin genes

See also

References

External links