Glue made by mussels to aid in fixing nerves

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Wilker MUSSELS WITH MUSCLE: Mussels use protein based thread-like glue to attach themselves to underwater surfaces. The glue may have medical applications such as repairing nerve damage.

By Ian Clift
Summer Reporter

An engineer, biologist, chemist and a saltwater mussel have come together in an attempt to glue together nerves in the body in hopes of helping spinal cord injury victims.

Riyi Shi, assistant professor of neuroscience, has been working with a product known as polyethylene glycol that can be used to glue together completely severed axons in nerve cells. The glue is used to bind the cell membranes back together, but also requires two to three weeks to heal making it impractical in living organisms.

"We found that even when we use polyethylene glycol, the union is very weak, so it easily breaks down again," said Shi. To let the reconnected nerves fully heal, another glue was needed that could complement the membrane binding glue by binding the connective tissues surrounding the axons. And that’s where mussels come in.

Mussels are dark edible bivalve mollusks, commonly known as shellfish that make threads with little discs of glue that attach to underwater surfaces. The protein rich glue made by the mollusks, said Jonathan Wilker, assistant professor of chemistry, has even been shown to attach itself to biological tissues and Teflon.

Wilker said, "Teflon is the best non-stick surface we have around, but these things can still stick to them. Any tissue that's been torn or severed we can possibly put it back together."

Wilker, in collaboration with Shi and Richard Stroshine, professor of agriculture and biomedical engineering, has devised tests using damaged nervous tissue that has been glued together. Models to test the strength of native non injured nerve cells have also been developed using a machine that tests biological tissue strength.

Wilker observed the mussel glue for the first time while on the beach and wondered how this substance worked. He found out that little to no research had been conducted on it before.

"It's an incredibly cool system, yet it's not known and we get to work on it," said Wilker. "I'm having a lot of fun with it."

Another of Wilker's projects will allow him to dawn scuba gear and enter the various lakes of Indiana in search of the freshwater Zebra mussel that has spread rapidly across the central United States after its introduction in the Great Lakes.

Preliminary tests are still being conducted on the contents of the biological adhesive found in both saltwater and freshwater mussels in a hope this will help scientists in creating surgical adhesives and in removing barnacles and other mollusks from ship hulls.

Shi said, "Our school has a very unique situation where chemistry and biomedical research can come together. Biomedical research, in the next decade, will be a very powerful tool." He says research such as this will lead to advancements in spinal cord injury and cancer research.

The underwater world is relatively unexplored, said Wilker. "It's a whole other world under there and not a lot of people get to see it, which may be a good thing." He said people must learn to appreciate the helpful discoveries around us before examples are all gone.

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