Elastin: a representative ideal protein elastomer.

During the last half century, identification of an ideal (predominantly entropic) protein elastomer was generally thought to require that the ideal protein elastomer be a random chain network. Here, we report two new sets of data and review previous data. The first set of new data utilizes atomic force microscopy to report single-chain force-extension curves for (GVGVP)(251) and (GVGIP)(260), and provides evidence for single-chain ideal elasticity.