We are talking about titin - this is the largest known protein in nature, it consists of 244 individually folded
The production of artificial muscle fibers has alreadyhas long been of interest to researchers. So they tried to develop materials that had similar muscle properties. They can be used, for example, in soft robotics.
The authors of the new work wondered why they couldn’t produce the necessary muscles directly, but use microbes rather than animals for this.
There are problems that interfere with bacteriaproduce large proteins. So the research team engineered the bacteria to assemble smaller protein segments into ultra-high molecular weight polymers, about 2 megadaltons in size—about 50 times larger than the average bacterial protein.
They then used a wet-spinning approach to turn proteins into fibers about ten microns in diameter, about one tenth the thickness of a human hair.
Based on the results of the work, the authors analyzedthe structure of these fibers to understand what molecular mechanisms give it such strength, as well as the ability to dissipate mechanical energy in the form of heat. The fibers turned out to be stronger than Kevlar.
Titanium production will be inexpensive and scalable. We can use artificial muscle fibers instead of real animal tissues, for example.
Fuzhong Zhang, Professor, Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering
The authors believe that the results of their work can beuse for biomedicine, since the obtained protein is almost identical to our muscle tissue. It is also biocompatible, so it can be an excellent suture material.
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