Designed biomaterials to mimic the mechanical properties of muscles

Shanshan Lv, Daniel M. Dudek, Yi Cao, M. M. Balamurali, John Gosline () and Hongbin Li ()
Additional contact information
Shanshan Lv: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
Daniel M. Dudek: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
Yi Cao: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
M. M. Balamurali: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
John Gosline: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada
Hongbin Li: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada

Nature, 2010, vol. 465, issue 7294, 69-73

Abstract: Muscle mimicry Shanshan Lv et al. have combined the well-characterized artificial elastomeric protein GB1 with resilin, a protein found in insects, to produce artificial proteins that mimic the molecular architecture of titin, the protein that largely governs the passive elastic properties of muscle. These new artificial proteins combine structured and unstructured domains and can be crosslinked into a solid. The resulting biomaterial is resilient at low strains, and extensible and tough at high strains, mimicking the passive properties of muscle, and making it potentially suitable for use in tissue engineering as a scaffold and matrix for artificial muscles. This is an example of tailoring the macroscopic properties of a material through engineering at the single molecule level.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09024 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:465:y:2010:i:7294:d:10.1038_nature09024

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09024

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().