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Engineers have developed a building material that uses the root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells. Their results show that this m

Engineers have developed a building material that uses the root-like mycelium of a fungus and bacteria cells. Their results, publishing April 16 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science, show that this material -- which is manufactured with living cells at low temperatures -- is capable of self-repairing and could eventually offer a sustainable alternative for high-emission building materials like concrete. "Biomineralized materials do not have high enough strength to replace concrete in all applications, but we and others are working to improve their properties so they can see greater usage," said corresponding author Chelsea Heveran, an assistant professor at Montana State University.

Freshwater oysters could be key to developing stronger, 'greener' adhesives

If you think oysters are just delicious seafood, think again. Freshwater oysters produce an adhesive that may hold the secret to developing more environmentally friendly glues with applications from dental care to construction and shipping. An international research team recently used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) to determine what the unique adhesive is made of. Thriving in African rivers and lakes, Etheria elliptica oysters produce a special material that helps them stick to wood or other oysters, creating complex underwater reefs. Never studied before, this oyster glue has characteristics rarely found in similar organisms: it's made of a mineral called aragonite that the oyster arranges so that it is soft on the outside and progressively harder on the inside. "These oyster shells aren't exactly like our teeth and our bones, but there are a lot of similarities," says Rebecca Metzler, professor of physics at Colgate University in New York State. "And so, if the adhesive can work for the oyster shell, maybe it could work pretty well for what's happening inside of us."

Scientists fabricate composites that combine high strength and bioactivity inspired by the cortical bone

Researchers have created scaffolds with enhanced strength by fabricating 20 vol% polydopamine-modified nano hydroxyapatite (pDA-nHA), featuring a distinctive lamellar structure. These scaffolds were then immersed in a polyetherketoneketone (PEKK) synthesis system for reinforcement, offering an innovative approach to both augment the mechanical robustness of the material and enhance the bioactivity of PEKK. Nano hydroxyapatite (nHA), the primary inorganic component of bone widely utilized in bone tissue engineering, suffers from poor mechanical properties when used alone. Conversely, polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), a high-performance polymer approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and used in dentistry and biomaterial science, struggles with bioinertia, affecting its osteogenesis applications. In a study published in the journal Supramolecular Materials, researchers from Sichuan University, China, introduced pDA-nHA/PEKK composites that combine high strength and bioactivity.

Scientists have transformed single-cell algae into functional perovskite materials. The team has converted mineral shells of algae into lead halide perovskites with tunable physical properties. The new perovskites have unique nano-architectures unachievable by conventional synthetic production. The method can be applied to the mass production of perovskites with tunable structural and electro-optical properties from single-celled organisms.

Perovskites are materials that are increasingly popular for a wide range of applications because of their remarkable electrical, optical, and photonic properties. Perovskite materials have the potential to revolutionize the fields of solar energy, sensing and detecting, photocatalysis, lasers, and others.

The properties of perovskites can be tuned for specific applications by changing their chemical composition and internal architecture, including the distribution and orientation of its crystal structure. At the moment, the ability to influence these properties is massively limited by manufacturing methods. A team of scientists at TU Dresden was able to create perovskites with unique nano-architectures and crystal properties from algae, taking advantage of years of evolution of these single-celled organisms.

Taking Advantage of the Evolution

"Unicellular organisms have responded over hundreds of millions of years to a wide range of environmental factors such as temperature, pH, and mechanical stress. As a result, some of them evolved to produce absolutely unique biomaterials that are exclusive to nature," says Dr. Igor Zlotnikov, research group leader at the B CUBE -- Center for Molecular Bioengineering who led the study. "Minerals formed by living organisms often exhibit structural and crystallographic characteristics that are far beyond the production capacities offered by current synthetic methods."

Neutron experiments reveal what maintains good function in bones

Around 500 million years ago, early vertebrates in the seas became fish, adopting an inner skeleton and a flexible spine based on a nanocomposite of fibers and mineral, known as bone material. This "invention" of evolution was so successful that the basic structure was also adopted for later vertebrates that lived on land.

However, while the bones of all terrestrial vertebrates are basically equipped with bone cells (osteocytes), certain fish species continued to evolve and finally managed to create a more energy efficient material: bone lacking bone cells, found today for example in fish such as salmon, medaka or tilapia.

Samples with and without bone cells

"We asked ourselves how bone samples with and without bone cells actually differ in their microstructures and properties," says Prof. Paul Zaslansky, who heads a research group at Charité Berlin and specializes in mineralized biomaterials including teeth and bones.

Scientists learn about fatigue resistance of materials from bivalve hinge

Recently, flexible and foldable devices have developed at a dramatic rate. More and more foldable devices appear in people's lives. Long-term service requires the folded parts to endure repeated deformation which might cause fatigue damage to the devices. Consequently, the damage will affect the normal function of the devices. Inspired by the hinge of bivalve Cristaria plicata, which experiences hundreds of thousands of repeating opening-and-closing valve motions throughout the bivalve's lifetime, a research team led by Prof. Yu Shuhong collaborating with Prof. Wu Hengan from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) proposed their tactics to improve the fatigue resistance of structural materials. The work titled "Deformable hard tissue with high fatigue resistance in the hinge of bivalve Cristaria plicata" was published in Science on 23 June 2023. The researchers illuminated the mechanism of fatigue resistance of deformable biomineral tissue in the hinge of bivalve C. plicata, a species of mollusk, and proposed a novel design strategy of fatigue-resistant structural materials by exploiting the inherent properties of each component through the multiscale structure.

At Last: New Synthetic Tooth Enamel Is Harder and Stronger Than the Real Thing

Delivering what has been so challenging to produce, researchers present an engineered analog of tooth enamel – an ideal model for designing biomimetic materials – designed to closely mimic the composition and structure of biological teeth’s hard mineralized outer layer. It demonstrates exceptional mechanical properties, they say.

Natural tooth enamel – the thin outer layer of our teeth – is the hardest biological material in the human body. It is renowned for its high stiffness, hardness, viscoelasticity, strength, and toughness and exhibits exceptional damage resistance, despite being only several millimeters thick.

Tooth enamel’s unusual combination of properties is a product of its hierarchical architecture – a complex structure made up of mostly hydroxyapatite nanowires interconnected by an amorphous intergranular phase (AIP) consisting of magnesium-substituted amorphous calcium phosphate. However, accurately replicating this type of hierarchical organization in a scalable abiotic composite has remained a challenge.

How Seashells Are Made

If you know that seashells are made of basically the same stuff as chalk, you might have wondered why chalk is crumbly but seashells are super tough. This week on Reactions, we explain: The secret’s in the biochemistry.