Dee Dee's research:

Underwater Adhesives

Mentor:  Chengjun Sun

Faculty Advisor: J. Herbert Waite

Lab Location: Marine Biotechnology

Department: MCD Biology

 

 

Project Description:  Studying the Underwater Adhesives from Marine Organisms

Phragmatopoma Californica (Sandcastle Worm) builds its own protective tube homes by gluing shell bit, sand, and debris from the ocean floor. The cement glue is protein-based and it comes from an organ called the thorax. The cement is a solid foam made by cross-linked proteins (cross linking is a bond that forms between  the molecules).  We want to study this glue made from the worm. 
 
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Project Goals:

•Figure out how the worm’s glue works so we can one day make a glue that works underwater. An
•underwater glue would have numerous applications for many fields of study (i.e. the biomedical community like dentistry)
•In order to do so, we first have to know what the glue is made out of and examine the components. We're primarily interested in the modified amino acid Dopa, because we think it is reasonable for the cross linking of the proteins.

 

Lab Work:

To examine Dopa and the components of proteins, we need to purify proteins. We physical collect and gather the new tubes from the Sandcastle worms and run acid hydrolysis on these tubes. Flash evaporation, affinity column purification, elution, amino acid analysis, High Pressure Liquid Chromatography, and Mass Spectrometry all come later.

 

 

                                Mentor Jun and Me