Within the animal kingdom, mussels are masters of underwater adhesion ... These tenacious adhesive structures have prompted scientists in recent years to design similar bioinspired, waterproof ...

are made up of byssal threads and are used to help keep the mussels tethered in place. At the end of each thread is a disc-shaped plaque that acts as an underwater glue. The unusual qualities of ...

However, the precise mechanism behind EGF-based underwater adhesion remained ... greater than widely recognized wet-adhesive proteins, such as mefp-5 (mussel foot protein) and suckerin (spider ...

GAITHERSBURG, MD. -- "Nature didn't make mussel glue for man's instant gratification," says Herbert Waite, the marine biochemist who first isolated adhesive protein from the foot of the common blue ...

In the first part of the video, you see a marine mussel producing the byssal threads and glue plaques it uses to anchor itself to rocks and other mussels in the intertidal zones where it lives.

Bioengineers at MIT fused two different mussel foot proteins with curli fibers, which are produced by E. coli bacteria in biofilms, to create a new underwater adhesive. The glue, which the researchers ...