Mussel Power
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Talk about your powerful mussels.
What makes mussels the undisputed musclemen of marine invertebrates?
Marine biochemist Herbert Waite has long been fascinated by mussels.
Mussels live their wave-pounded lives dog-piled on rocks, piers, and boats. There, they have to be flexible enough to move with flowing water, to catch food... and yet to stay cemented in place as tightly as Charlton Heston's toupee in a wind machine.
So the tiny creatures have developed tendon-like fibers called byssal.
With byssal, mussels attach to their chosen mooring. Then the fibers are coated with a secretion that sets like concrete, producing hard, flexible, and durable tethers.
To unlock the coating's secrets, Waite removed its chemical components, one-by-one. After each ingredient was removed, he tested the coating's hardness.
Apparently mussels really do have an iron grip... because when iron and calcium were pulled out, the hardness dropped by 50 percent.
Waite says the findings could lead to new medical coatings that would protect tissues from abrasion. But can they make a tasty chowder out of it? Perhaps no.
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