Research on making fibers from fish mucus

Experts are working to "turn" Hagfish's mucus into an environmentally friendly material.

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US researchers have recently discovered a new technology to make adhesives, hoping to fabricate fibers, protein fibers that can be directly attached to living tissue from Hagfish.

Hagfish lives in the deep sea, has existed for over 300 million years and has not changed much from their ancestors. Hagfish has a skull, two brains, they are blind and often eat at night, mainly food of large animals (fish, marine animals).

The most special feature of this Hagfish fish is that their whole body is covered in slime because they release themselves when in danger.

This slime can cause Hagfish's enemies to suffocate and die. Even sharks must be shy when encountering this particular fish.

Hagfish has about 100 mucous and mucous holes on each side of his body. When the predator just opened his mouth to grab Hagfish's fish, the slime on the fish skin immediately entered the enemy's mouth.

When it comes to water, the slime "turns" into a large glue cloud, reducing the flow of water through the gills, making predators unable to breathe.

Recognizing this amazing feature of greasy glue from Hagfish , experts have further researched and found this mucus rich in fiber - called intermediate fiber (IF).

Each liter of mucus has tens of thousands of fibers and these fibers have mechanical properties similar to silk, 12 nanometers wide and 15cm long.

These fibers are very strong, when combined with seawater, protein glue will tightly wrap together, creating a great elasticity. They are 100 times smaller than human hair but 10 times more tough than nylon.

From here, researchers are trying to synthesize new environmentally friendly metamaterials that can be used in the production of fibers in food packaging, airbag production .