Comparative biophysics of intermediate filament based materials

本提案中描述的工作将继续我的实验室在NSERC的资助下在生物材料和仿生学领域开展的工作。生物材料是由生物体制成的材料和结构，我们研究它们是为了了解生物体如何将它们用于自己的目的，并获得可以帮助人类生产具有改进性能和/或环境可持续性的材料的见解。这项申请中提出的研究将集中在两种材料上，八目鳗粘液和鲸鱼鲸须。我们对八目鳗粘液感兴趣，部分原因是这种独特的生物材料中有着非凡的纤维。八目鳗的粘液被数以万计的蛋白质线加固，这些蛋白质线在尺寸和机械性能上类似于蜘蛛丝。它们在特化的细胞内产生，这些细胞以某种方式在其细胞质内产生约15厘米长的单一连续的线。这项研究的目的之一是了解这些细胞是如何实现这一点的。我们希望从研究这些细胞中的线程发展中吸取的教训将产生新的见解，这将有助于使用纳米技术生产可持续材料的努力。我们还将研究粘液分泌物与海水接触时粘液成分的部署机制。我们期望这项研究将揭示粘液囊泡膜中存在新的离子和水通道，其中一些可能具有作为治疗剂的价值。我们还将研究鲸鱼鲸须的生物力学，并试图了解这种独特的角蛋白材料在面向舌头的边缘磨损的过程，以形成用于从这些动物的海水中捕获猎物的纤维垫。我们还将研究鲸须板之间的间隔组织的机械设计，我们怀疑这是一种独特的角蛋白，适用于阻尼鲸须板振荡，在须鲸的过滤器喂养过程中发生。这项研究可能会为过滤系统或独特的低弹性耗能材料的设计带来新的策略。

The work described in this proposal will continue the work in the field of biomaterials and biomimetics that my lab has carried out for the last five years with funding from NSERC. Biomaterials are materials and structures that are made by organisms, and we study them in order to understand how organisms use them for their own purposes, and to gain insights that could help humans produce materials with improved performance and/or environmental sustainability. The research proposed in this application will focus on two materials, hagfish slime and whale baleen. We are interested in hagfish slime in part because of the remarkable fibres that reinforce this unique biomaterial. Hagfish slime is reinforced with tens of thousands of protein threads that resemble spider silks in their dimensions and mechanical properties. They are produced within specialized cells that somehow manufacture a single, continuous thread within their cytoplasm that is about 15 cm long. One aim of this research is to understand how these cells achieve this. We expect that lessons learned from studying thread development in these cells will yield novel insights that will aid in efforts to produce sustainable materials using nanotechnology. We will also investigate the mechanisms by which the mucus component of the slime is deployed when the slime exudate comes in contact with seawater. We expect that this research will reveal the presence of novel ion and water channels in membranes of mucus vesicles, some of which may have value as therapeutic agents. We will also investigate the biomechanics of whale baleen and attempt to understand the process by which this unique keratin material wears away on the edge facing the tongue to form a mat of fibres used to strain prey from seawater in these animals. We will also study the mechanical design of the spacer tissue between baleen plates, which we suspect is a unique type of keratin that is adapted for damping baleen plate oscillations that occur during filter feeding in baleen whales. This research could lead to novel strategies for the design of filtration systems or unique low-resilience, energy-dissipating materials.