Shine OnHagfish slime: the future of fashion?
Fashionistas, get ready for slime.
Researchers at Ontario's University of Guelph are harvesting hagfish slime and spinning it into the textile of the future. They believe the silk-like material could be used in high-performance clothing and could be offered as an environmentally safe alternative to synthetic fibres.
The researchers published their findings in the journal Biomacromolecules.
"The textile industry needs an affordable, sustainable alternative to oil-based polymers, and a recent study shows that hagfish slime protein threads have the potential to be spun and woven into novel biomaterials," says a University of Guelph news release on the research of Atsuko Negishi, a research assistant in the Department of Integrative Biology.
Hagfish scavenge for food along the ocean floor. The jawless, spineless eel-like creatures have a secret weapon against their predators: they exude a suffocating, "abundant highly-condensed slime," Anna Rothschild writes for BBC News.
"They're maybe not the prettiest of creatures to work on, but I have a lot of respect for them," Tim Winegard, a researcher at the University of Guelph in Canada, studying the fibres found in hagfish slime, tells BBC News.
"These guys have been around through just about everything," he says. "They're a winner in terms of outlasting dinosaurs and many, many mass extinctions."
When the fibres of the slime are stretched in the water then dried out, they become silky. Scientists are hoping to use these fibres to create breathable athletic wear — and maybe even bullet-proof vests.
"I have a fibre that is about 80 to 100 microns in thickness and I’m able to pull on it and it doesn’t just simply break," Negishi tells the Chronicle Herald of a protein fibre she extracted from the slime. "It's worth moving toward the next step."
But there's a catch -- scientists have yet to figure out how to breed hagfish.
"We know very little about hagfish reproduction, and no-one has ever gotten hagfish to breed in captivity — amazing as that sounds," says Douglas Fudge, associate professor of the University of Guelph's Department of Integrative Biology.
Because the proteins that make up the slime are smaller than those in spider silk, researchers say they should be easier to replicate.
"The way spiders produce their silks is complex, and spiders cannot be farmed to yield high quantities of silk," says Negishi. "My research explores the potential of making high strength protein-based fibres using hagfish slime thread proteins rather than spider silk proteins."
"We're not quite there," Negishi tells the Chronicle Herald. "That's our motivation — that it would be nice to be able to make protein-based textiles or fabric or material."
Of course, should hagfish slime because the textile of the future, rebranding will be a must.
"Hagfish — it would probably scare people off a little bit!" laughs Winegard.
"I think the name might be a bit of a deterrent, not to mention the word 'slime.'"
