Nature
PUBLISHED
1
Some of the most ingenious recipes come from nature, just ask the mussel. Capable of slapping itself on the side of ships and forming a rapid bond that’s hard to break, it’s a covetable strength for an adhesive. A team of scientists at MIT and the Collaborative Research Center “Dynamic Hydrogels at Biointerfaces” decided to take the idea a step further, combining a mixture of mucilaginous and sticky proteins to create a new kind of superglue.
Waterproof adhesives have been on the minds of scientists looking to innovate better solutions in wound care, surgical treatment, and the prevention of infection following medical interventions. There does already exist a material that can flexibly stick to things while reducing bacterial build-up, and you’re stuffed full of it right this moment.
Mucus forms a protective layer that sludges across the surface of everything in our bodies that isn’t covered by skin. It protects us from unfavorable pH, bacteria, viruses, and makes processes like swallowing, coughing, and sneezing more effective. What if we could somehow harness the antimicrobial traits of mucus and combine them with the waterproof stickiness of mussels to make a new, highly effective adhesive?
To explore just that, the team took polymers inspired by the adhesive proteins found in mussel plaques and combined them with mucin proteins from pigs, as well as synthetically derived mucin-inspired polymers. They then tested the resulting substances to explore their gelation and mechanical properties, and trialed them as tissue adhesives and antimicrobial coatings.
We expect that our approach would be compatible with mucins sourced from humans, such as salivary mucins.
George Degen
The team found they could precisely control the gelation timescale, ranging from seconds to hours depending on the molecular architecture of the polymers used. “Depending on how much cross-linking you have, we can control the speed at which the liquids gelate and adhere,” said Rainer Haag of Freie Universität Berlin in a statement. “We can do this all on wet surfaces, at room temperature, and under very mild conditions. This is what is quite unique.”
When used on pig skin (as a model for human skin) it was also an effective adhesive, and it could prevent the build-up of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a nasty and common culprit in post-operative infections.
This study focused on porcine mucins and solutions of synthetic mucin-inspired polymers, but the available options could change in future. "In this paper, we did not work with human-derived samples," said George Degen, a postdoctoral researcher in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, to IFLScience, "but we expect that our approach would be compatible with mucins sourced from humans, such as salivary mucins."
The superglue is in its early stages but the team hypothesize it could one day be adapted into an injection or spray that forms a sticky gel. It could be pivotal for improving patient safety during the insertion of medical implants, or as a form of wound dressing that prevents infection.
"We are excited about our approach for developing adhesive hydrogels with potential applications in biomedicine (e.g., antifouling coatings, surgical adhesives) or sustainable packaging," added Degen.
We didn’t have a mucus-mussel collab on our 2025 Bingo Card, but it sounds like a winning combination.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
