A New Type of Biological Glue Derived from Fish Swim Bladder: Outstanding Adhesion and Surgical Applications

Abstract

Mechanical strong adhesives have been widely explored in many technical fields. Therefore, a great deal of efforts has been devoted to the widespread investigation of synthetic adhesives and bioadhesives. Nevertheless, it is a crucial challenge to produce economical and practical protein‐based adhesives with robust adhesion properties for biomedical applications. In this study, the fish swim bladder as raw materials to produce robust adhesives by simple heating‐cooling treatment is utilized. The resulting fish swim bladder glue (FSG) reveals excellent lap shear strength on various hard substrates, especially wood and glass, exceeding many commercial available adhesives and artificial protein‐based adhesives. In addition, FSG also has low cytotoxicity and minimal inflammatory response, which exhibits considerable adhesion on soft tissues. Notably, the biocompatibility and biodegradability together with robust adhesion performance endow FSG the capacity in accelerating the wound healing and skin regeneration. Overall, these studies provide insight into the protein‐based adhesives from natural resources.

Molecularly Engineered Protein Glues with Superior Adhesion Performance

“…To the best of our knowledge, the adhesion performance of R144‐DNA adhesive was higher than any existing protein‐based adhesives, including K108‐NAT (Figure 2C). [ 25–33 ]…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, the adhesion performance of R144-DNA adhesive was higher than any existing protein-based adhesives, including K108-NAT (Figure 2C). [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] The water content plays a pivotal role in manipulating adhesion performance. [47,48] We thus utilized thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to evaluate the water content before and after the experiments.…”

“…In particular, compared to the lysine counterparts, the stronger cation-π and charge-charge interactions induced by arginine moieties endow R144-DNA glue with exceptional high adhesion strength (≈21 MPa on silicate substrates and ≈170 J m -2 on the skin), surpassing many other chemical and recombinant protein glues. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Owing to the good biocompatibility and robust adhesion performance, our glues are well suited for wound healing and facilitating skin regeneration. In addition, the high protonation of arginine in our biosynthetic proteins exhibited outstanding antibacterial activities.…”

Stimuli‐Responsive Natural Proteins and Their Applications

“…The amino acid sequence and diverse spatial structures provide the protein‐based materials with unique characteristics, including good biocompatibility/biodegradability, nontoxicity, and excellent mechanical properties [3–8] . Accordingly, natural proteins are regarded as a highly promising building block for protein‐based functional biomaterials [9–11] . Nowadays, researchers have developed artificial high‐strength protein fibers after extensively studying the natural spider silk protein and the silkworm fibroin protein [12–14] .…”

“…[3][4][5][6][7][8] Accordingly, natural proteins are regarded as a highly promising building block for protein-based functional biomaterials. [9][10][11] Nowadays, researchers have developed artificial high-strength protein fibers after extensively studying the natural spider silk protein and the silkworm fibroin protein. [12][13][14] Some super-strong underwater adhesives have been developed by learning from the mussel foot protein and the barnacle adhesive protein.…”