Second-order nonlinear optical microscopy of spider silk

Asymmetric β -sheet protein structures in spider silk should induce nonlinear optical interaction such as second harmonic generation (SHG) which is experimentally observed for a radial line and dragline spider silk using an imaging femtosecond laser SHG microscope. By comparing different spider silk...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics. B, Lasers and optics Lasers and optics, 2017-06, Vol.123 (6), p.1-8, Article 188
Main Authors: Zhao, Yue, Hien, Khuat Thi Thu, Mizutani, Goro, Rutt, Harvey N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied physics
Asymmetry
Correlation analysis
Draglines
Engineering
Imaging
Lasers
Nonlinear optics
Nonlinear response
Optical Devices
Optical microscopy
Optics
Orientation
Photonics
Physical Chemistry
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Polarization
Quantum Optics
Second harmonic generation
Sheets
Silk
Spiders
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Asymmetric β -sheet protein structures in spider silk should induce nonlinear optical interaction such as second harmonic generation (SHG) which is experimentally observed for a radial line and dragline spider silk using an imaging femtosecond laser SHG microscope. By comparing different spider silks, we found that the SHG signal correlates with the existence of the protein β -sheets. Measurements of the polarization dependence of SHG from the dragline indicated that the β -sheet has a nonlinear response depending on the direction of the incident electric field. We propose a model of what orientation the β -sheet takes in spider silk.
ISSN:0946-2171
1432-0649
DOI:10.1007/s00340-017-6766-z