Mussel-derived bioadhesives

Abstract

Marine mussels use MAPs (MAPs) for their adhesion. MAPs have fascinating properties, including strong adhesion to various material substrates, water displacement, biocompatibility, and controlled biodegradability. In this work, among six types of MAPs, including fp-1-fp-6, biosynthetic constructs of MAPs are considered; hybrid type recombinant MAPs are designed to improve productivity and purification. Hybrid recombinant fp-151, which comprises six decapeptide repeats of fp-1 at both N and C-termini of fp-5, was successfully overexpressed in a bacterial system, showing approximately 1 g=L production yield in a pilot scale fed-batch bioreactor culture. For industrial applications, it was attempted to use MAPs in tissue engineering fields as coating extracellular matrix (ECM) through surface modification and constructing nanofibrous scaffolds. As a result, the MAP-based coating strategy could be generally applied for facile and efficient surface modification of negatively charged bioactive molecules for tissue engineering. The use of MAP-based nanofibers could provide bioactive peptides efficiently onto the scaffold surface, enhancing the cell attachment and proliferation on the nanofibers fabricated using RGD peptide-conjugated MAPs compared with bare polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer nanofibers as well having a four times higher mechanical strength. Also, easy fabrication through blending with diverse types of synthetic polymers and significant bone regeneration was observed. In addition, there was a trial for utilization of MAPs in pharmaceutics, cosmetics, and food industries with encapsulating active molecules such as chemical drugs, proteins, cells, and flavor ingredients through a complex coacervation technique based on MAPs. Finally, MAPs have been suggested as immobilization material for biosensors due to their unique adhesive property on various materials, including biomolecules, glass, polymers, and metals. MAP was genetically fused with C-termini of the BC domain of protein A and can be successfully used as a functional material for the development of various immunosensors and immunoassays. The MAP-based whole cell biosensor can be successfully used for industrial applications, including environmental monitoring of chemicals and heavy metals, and food screening. Collectively, MAPs might be a useful and applicable biomaterial in diverse industrial fields due to their superior adhesion properties (even in water), biocompatibility, and controlled biodegradable properties.