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Hagfish Slime Could Make Super-Strong Clothes
Having the ability to create a 20 liter cloud of slime and tie themselves in knots, hagfish have always been one of my favorite deep-sea denizens. Being a living slime dispenser has not won the species many fans however, with the notable exceptions of Mike Rowe and Dr. Egon Spengler. All that is about to change thanks to the work of a research team at Canada’s University of Guelph. They've found that hagfish slime might be used to make new plastics and even super-strong fabrics. From the article: "A research team at Canada’s University of Guelph managed to harvest the slime from the fish, dissolve it in liquid, and then reassemble its structure by spinning it like silk. It’s an important first step in being able to process the hagfish slime into a useable material, according to Atsuko Negishi, a research assistant and lead author on the paper in this week’s journal Biomacromolecules. 'We’re trying to understand how they make these threads and how we can learn from that to make protein-based fibers that have excellent mechanical properties,' Negishi said. 'The first step is can we harvest the threads. It turns out that is doable.'"
I am not sure I want my new shirt to turn back into slime if it gets wet...
P.S. This post is a joke.
Sounds like politicians trying to justify their positions.
The rebranding necessary for this to sound appealing will be a joy to watch.
Synthetics like nylon are generally made by going down the energy gradient. That is, you start with something high in energy like petroleum, then run it through a bunch of chemical reactions which use up bits of the energy contained therein to make your synthetic fiber. This works because the energy gradient makes the raw chemicals want to combine the way you want them to, and all you have to do is mix them in the right amounts at the right time (and sometimes right temperature and pressure).
Naturals like silk and cotton go up the energy gradient. Start with raw materials, add energy, and build the fibers out of sugars (cellulose - cotton) or proteins (silk). If you mix a bunch of the raw ingredients in a beaker, they won't combine they way you want them to because it's going up the energy gradient. You need little machines which take energy and combine the materials in the shape you want. Our nano-technology isn't good enough yet to compete with nature''s nano-technology, so it's easier to have plants and animals do the nano-assembly and just harvest the final product.
Unless the fibers from hagfish slime buck the trend and go down the energy gradient, they're unlikely to replace synthetics. All you'll end up doing is raising hagfish on a farm to harvest their slime, which you refine into these fibers. Production capacity will be limited by the number of hagfish you can raise, as opposed to synthetics whose production is limited by the raw materials you can acquire. In other words, don't expect this to replace plastics unless hagfish turn out to be extraordinarily easy to farm in huge numbers.
Sure, fossil records. Let's go with NOAA since they're fairly well respected:
And, then there's Berkeley:
So, yes, is there is strong evidence that the morphology of hagfish hasn't changed in 300 million years. That's not to say there has been zero changes to it, but nothing radical.
If you can compare a modern specimen to a 300 million year old fossil and fine no differences, you pretty much conclude that it hasn't significantly evolved. Think coelacanth. Think crocodilians. Think MPAA. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, that phrase "hasn't evolved in X years" has always bothered me. Of course they've evolved, their genes are subject to the same changes due to random mutation as everyone else's. It's just that the selection pressures on them have kept them largely the same (morphologically speaking) as far as we can tell from fossils.
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They mentioned that farming it from the fish in adequate amounts would difficult. They hope to graft the slime production into bacteria for mass production.
You don't know that they haven't changed much. You can only tell that the general morphology (often just the skeleton) of a fossil find matches a modern animal. What does it tell you about the rest? Organs, biochemistry, innate behaviour?
Ezekiel 23:20
are you kidding? useful pigs, cows and chickens are nowhere near extinction.
Since I was curious about the hagfish, looked up and found this video, showing it using its slime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfyq4Zhr5Y8
Cosplayers.net - The Cosplayers Network
yes true but not having nasty bits of rock jammed into ones knees (and having scarred up skin on her knees) would be a good thing.
It would still HURT but it would be a lot less nasty
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A common theme in the fish world is to be given an ugly name until someone finds a good use for you.(though, generally the use is eating)
slimehead->orange roughy
rockfish->pacific red snapper
dogfish->rock salmon
pilchard->cornish sardine
etc...
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