Abstract
THIN sections of keratin fibres can be “stained” by reaction with solutions of the salts of some heavy metals, notably silver and osmium. Electron microscopy shows a texture caused by the heavier staining of the matrix material surrounding the microfibrils. Such treatments also effectively enhance the small-angle equatorial X-ray diffraction, which has the character of the scattering from an assembly of roughly cylindrical holes (the microfibrils) in a continuous matrix of comparatively large electron density. It consists of peaks, E1, E2, E3, with equivalent Bragg spacings d1 = 80 Å, d2 = 42 Å, and d3 = 27 Å, of which the first may be chiefly ascribed to inter-microfibrillar interference effects, and the other two to the first two diffraction fringes from a single microfibrillar hole1. The intensity ratio I2/I3 of E2 to E3 should in theory be approximately 4.2 : 1, and this agrees well with the observed value in the most studied case of silver staining2.
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BAILEY, C., WOODS, H. Matrix–Microfibril Texture in α-Keratin as observed by X-ray Diffraction and Electron Microscopy. Nature 218, 765 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/218765a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/218765a0
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