Mussels, besides being delicious, are also shockingly good at sticking to things – even underwater on slimy, otherwise un-adherable objects. Now, researchers from MIT have taken a cue from the mighty muscle and created an adhesive that’s even more powerful than the mighty mussel’s.

The researchers took the natural proteins secreted by mussels and combined them with bacterial proteins to create a new hybrid material. The bacteria act as “factories” of a sort, a new way to synthesize biological materials with multiple components. The new adhesive may have applications ranging from ship repair to closing surgical wounds.

“The ultimate goal for us is to set up a platform where we can start building materials that combine multiple different functional domains together and to see if that gives us better materials performance,” says Timothy Lu, an associate professor of biological engineering and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS).

Previous attempts at engineering adhesive proteins included tinkering with E. coli bacteria to produce a synthetic mussel foot. However, these synthetics failed to capture the complexity of natural mussel feet. The newest iteration uses bacteria to create two different mussel feet, focusing on creating curli fibers that can clump together to create dense, complex masses.

The curli fibers would bond to one of two artificial mussel feet, and were then purified and were then allowed to incubate and form dense, fibrous masses. The resulting material has a regular yet flexible structure that binds strongly to both dry and wet surfaces.

“The result is a powerful wet adhesive with independently functioning adsorptive and cohesive moieties,” says Herbert Waite, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California at Santa Barbara who was not part of the research team. “The work is very creative, rigorous, and thorough.”

Stronger than natural mussel proteins, the material is the strongest biologically created adhesive to date. The researchers hope that by adding even more protein varieties, they can further increase the strength.