Spring Out

In among the flexing fibres inside our muscles, a protein called titin acts like a tiny spring. It’s attracting attention from bioengineers looking to use muscle-like elastic materials outside the body. But this biomimicry requires creative thinking – to make this titin fibre (viewed under a scanning transmission electron microscope) researchers called on the help of bacteria. First they prepared modified DNA 'instructions' for building a chain of titin molecules, and transferred them into bacterial cells. The eager bacteria set to work producing short titin chains and, with a little help, chemically linked them together. The resulting titin polymer is strong and tough but also biodegradable, raising hopes for using in it surgical sutures or tissue engineering. Aside from these important applications, pulling molecular designs out of mammalian cells gives researchers another way to explore how they might work in real life.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Christopher H. Bowen and Cameron J. Sargent, and colleagues
• Department of Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Saint Louis, MO, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, August 2021