The structure of hair, muscle, and related proteins

Abstract

It is thirty years since x-ray photographs were first made of hair, muscle, nerve, and sinew, by Herzog and Jancke.(1) During this period, despite the efforts of many investigators, the photographs have eluded detailed interpretation, and the molecular structures of the proteins have remained undetermined. In the present paper we propose structures for hair, muscle, and related proteins in the extended state (β keratin and β myosin) and the contracted state (α keratin and α myosin), and discuss the extent to which the diffraction data are accounted for by the proposed structures.