Abstract

Biomineralization is a process in which specialized cells secrete and deliver inorganic ions into confined spaces limited by organic matrices or scaffolds. Chicken eggshell is the fastest biomineralization system on earth, and therefore, it is a good experimental model for the study of biomineralization. Eggshell mineralization starts on specialized dispersed sites of the soft fibrillar eggshell membranes referred to as negatively charged keratan sulfate mammillae. However, the rest of the fibrillar eggshell membranes never mineralizes, although 21% of their amino acids are acidic. We hypothesized that, relative to the mammillae, the negatively charged amino acids of the fibrillar eggshell membranes are not competitive enough to promote calcite nucleation and growth. To test this hypothesis, we experimentally increased the number of negatively charged carboxylate groups on the eggshell membrane fibers and compared it with in vitro calcite deposition of isolated intact eggshell membranes. We conclude that the addition of poly-carboxylated groups onto eggshell membranes increases the number of surface nucleation sites but not the crystal size.