This morning, I was excited to receive a news release about Dr. Hongbin Li’s recent work which has been published in Nature magazine. A Canada Research Chair in Molecular Nanoscience  and Protein Engineering at the University of British Columbia (Canada), Dr. Li’s work has been featured here before. (Part 1 and Part 2 of the interviews where he patiently answered my uninformed questions about his 2008 work on proteins where he had them behave like shock absorbers.) This latest work builds on his 2008 discoveries and extends them as he considers muscle elasticity.

From the news release,

University of British Columbia researchers have cast artificial proteins into a new solid biomaterial that very closely mimics the elasticity of muscle.

The approach, detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature, opens new avenues to creating solid biomaterials from smaller engineered proteins, and has potential applications in material sciences and tissue engineering.

“There are obvious long-term implications for tissue engineers,” says Hongbin Li, associate professor in the Dept. of Chemistry. “But at a fundamental level, we’ve learned that the mechanical properties we engineer into the individual proteins that make up this biomaterial can be translated into useful mechanical properties at the larger scale.”

The work will be published tomorrow “Designed biomaterials to mimic the mechanical properties of muscles” by Shanshan Lv, Daniel M. Dudek, Yi Cao, M. M. Balamurali, John Gosline, Hongbin Li in Nature 465, 69-73 (6 May 2010) doi:10.1038/nature09024 Letter.

Again from the news release,

The mechanical properties of these biomaterials can be fine-tuned, providing the opportunity to develop biomaterials that exhibit a wide range of useful properties – including mimicking different types of muscles. The material is also fully hydrated and biodegradable.

I wonder where are these ‘muscles’ going to appear? On robots?

Congratulations to Dr. Hongbin Li and your colleagues, Shanshan Lv, Daniel M. Dudek, Yi Cao, M. M. Balamurali, and John Gosline.