Nylon, Kevlar and other synthetic¹ fabrics²: Step aside. If new scientific research pans out（成功）, people may be sporting shirts, blouses（女衬衫） and other garments made from fibers³ modeled after those in the icky, super-strong slime from a creature called the hagfish. The study appears in ACS' journal Biomacromolecules. Lead author Atsuko Negishi, her supervisor⁴ Douglas S. Fudge and colleagues explain that petroleum⁵ is the raw material for making modern synthetics⁶. Rising prices and the quest for more sustainable alternatives have led scientists to consider the possibilities of using protein-based raw materials, such as spider silk. Another candidate comes from the hagfish（八目螨类鱼）, an eel-like fish that produces a thick slime to protect itself against predators⁷. A single Atlantic Hagfish can produce quarts of slime in seconds. It clogs⁸ the gills and may suffocate⁹（压制） other fish. The slime consists of tens of thousands of remarkably¹⁰ strong threads, each 100 times thinner than a human hair. The scientists set out to investigate spinning spider-silk-like fibers from the proteins of these slime threads.

 

They developed a method for drawing hagfish slime thread proteins into fibers comparable to lab-made spider silk. It involved casting a thin self-supporting film of thread proteins on the surface of a salt solution, then grabbing it with forceps and lifting it upwards¹¹ so it collapses¹² into a single strand¹³. The threads in hagfish slime, they indicate, might be models for synthetic fibers made from renewable, naturally occurring proteins.

 

The authors acknowledge funding from the Advanced Foods and Materials Network and the Ontario Ministry¹⁴ of Economic Development and Innovation.

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