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Shoals Marine Lab researchers look to hagfish for 'biosteel' |
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Researchers at Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island, one of
nine outcroppings in the windswept Isles of Shoals six miles off the
coast of New Hampshire, are looking at the commercial potential of
invertebrate hagfish to make a high-performance material.
University of Guelph researcher Doug Fudge and collaborators at the University of British Columbia have been granted a patent for the commercial use of hagfish nanofilaments. The researchers are seeking a means to concentrate proteins in hagfish slime in solution and are attempting to use electrospinning to assemble it into threads. Hagfish, an ancient quasi-invertebrate fish and relative to the sea lamprey, produces a clogging slime as a defense against suction feeding teleost fishes. Tiny cytoskeleton filaments in this gelatinous slime could be used to make a high-performance material, the researchers say. The slime is made from protein filaments that have the same ultra-strong properties of spider webs, said Fudge. He and Guelph post-doc student Atsuko Negishi positioned hagfish microfilaments as an alternative to spider silk because the proteins that build the slime are much easier to amplify in a vector. “It sort of got us excited because it’s similar to spider silk,” Fudge said. |
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33 Fishing Community Members Say Permit Bank, Giacalone are pluses for Gloucester
This permit bank is a true local treasure for our fishing community and related businesses. Its existence has been one of the only positive things to come to this fishing community in decades.
