Molecular Weight Determination and Structure Identification of Bombyx mori L. Fibroin as Material in Dentistry

One potential and useful product of Indonesia's biodiversity is fibroin which extracted from silkworm cocoons of Bombyx mori L (silk fibroin). Silk fibroin, in which has capability to fuse into the human body, is used for bone graft or wound healing dressing. In the dentistry, researchers develop silk fibroin as a dental treatment material for pulp perforation teeth case. The dental treatment material developed from silk fibroin is expected to overcome the limitation of existing materials. The purpose of this study was to determine the molecular weight and structural characteristics identification of silk fibroin as a preliminary study before being used as dental material. This research used two methods, which were sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS PAGE) and Fourier transform infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). The result showed that there was an expression of electrophoresis bands on the molecular weight of 10 55 kDa, while the FTIR showed the peak spectra of fibroin sample was at 3309.80 cm-1. Based on its molecular weight and structure characteristic, fibroin consists of an NH group of protein that consists of several amino acids.