Unlocking the secrets of collagen:
How sea creature superpowers are inspiring smart biomaterials for human health.
Major findings on the inner workings of a brittle star’s ability to reversibly control the pliability of its tissues will help researchers solve the puzzle of mutable collagenous tissue (MCT) and potentially inspire new “smart” biomaterials for human health applications.
The work is directed by Denis Jacob Machado – assistant professor in Bioinformatics at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Center for Computational Intelligence to Predict Health and Environmental Risks (CIPHER) – and Vladimir Mashanov, staff scientist at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.