Tag Archives: Rong Long

Turning marine waste into medical applications

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This 2025 Research Story on the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada website describes work from McGill University to turn marine waste into a bioadhesive, Note: A link has been removed,

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at McGill University has developed an ultra-strong, environmentally friendly medical glue, or bioadhesive, made from marine waste. The discovery has promising applications for wound care, surgeries, drug delivery, wearable devices and medical implants.

“A glue that can close wounds or make something strongly adhere to the skin is critical for many medical interventions,” says Audrey Moores, a chemistry professor at McGill.

A July 31, 2025 McGill University news release, which originated the research story, has more detail to offer, Note: Links have been removed,

“Many existing bioadhesive products are based on toxic compounds, while overall, there is a need to explore new materials that demonstrate both high adhesion and strong fatigue resistance, or the ability to hold even if pulled apart repeatedly,” Moores said.  
 
Moore [sic] and main co-author Jianyu Li, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Canada Research Chair in Tissue Repair and Regeneration reported their findings in “Nanowhisker glues for fatigue-resistant bioadhesion and interfacial functionalization,” published in Nature Communications.  

Naturally sourced nanowhiskers give the glue its strength 

The new bioadhesive is composed of chitosan, a chemically modified form of chitin, the natural building block found in the exoskeletons of shellfish and certain fungi. 

The researchers modified the chitosan to have a nanowhisker shape – a feature that proved to be essential to the bioadhesive’s effectiveness – using a mechanochemical process pioneered by co-authors Moores and Edmond Lam in previous studies.   

 “We chemically manipulate this material to turn it into nanochitosan, which has a range of different properties we can finetune. Using this nanomaterial, we can make nanoglue,” Moores said. 

Ultrasound turns whiskers into interlocking structures 

To apply the nanoglue, researchers use a unique ultrasound technology developed by the Li group to penetrate the skin.  When exposed to sound waves, the nanowhiskers not only adhere firmly to skin but also interlock into a rigid, resilient scaffolding that drastically enhances the glue’s strength and durability. 

“Imagine you have a Band-Aid on your hand. It’s difficult to get it to stay, because your hand moves a lot,” Moores explained.  

“To get it to stick, you need the skin to be permeable to the glue. We used microneedles or ultrasound for that. 

 “We were surprised to see that ultrasound was critical to making a strong glue. While our initial strategy was to get the nanoglue to stick to the skin, we also discovered ultrasounds helped build a complex, interconnected network of our nanostructures. These nanowhisker glues are simply better than the current glues out there.”  

They say the nanostructure has promising applications beyond health care, in many engineering contexts. 

Allergy-safe, and potentially vegan 

The bioadhesive is also fully biocompatible, even for people with seafood allergies. 

“People who are allergic to shellfish are not allergic to chitin, but the proteins. We can remove these in the manufacturing process and avoid allergic reactions.  
 
“We could also theoretically make a vegan version from fungi,” Moores added. 

…

This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the National Research Council Ocean program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the National Institutes of Health of the United States, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) – Centre for Green Chemistry and Catalysis and McGill University.

For those who like to listen to their science news, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has an 8 mins. 8 secs. radio segment where researcher Audrey Moores is interviewed by Angelica Montgomery. on Quebec AM.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Nanowhisker glues for fatigue-resistant bioadhesion and interfacial functionalization by Shuaibing Jiang, Tony Jin, Tianqin Ning, Zhen Yang, Zhenwei Ma, Ran Huo, Yixun Cheng, Davis Kurdyla, Edmond Lam, Rong Long, Audrey Moores & Jianyu Li. Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 6826 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62019-y Published: 24 July 2025

This paper is open access.

From Cornell University, a liquid that remembers its shape

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Sometimes one experiences a frisson (shiver) when reading about a piece of research. Let’s see how you do with this Dec. 4, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

A bit reminiscent of the Terminator T-1000, a new material created by Cornell researchers is so soft that it can flow like a liquid and then, strangely, return to its original shape.

Rather than liquid metal, it is a hydrogel, a mesh of organic molecules with many small empty spaces that can absorb water like a sponge. It qualifies as a “metamaterial” with properties not found in nature and may be the first organic metamaterial with mechanical meta-properties.

The Dec. 3, 2012 Cornell University news article by Bill Steele, which originated the news item,goes on to explain the interest in hydrogels and what makes this particular formulation so special,

Hydrogels have already been considered for use in drug delivery — the spaces can be filled with drugs that release slowly as the gel biodegrades — and as frameworks for tissue rebuilding. The ability to form a gel into a desired shape further expands the possibilities. For example, a drug-infused gel could be formed to exactly fit the space inside a wound.

…

The new hydrogel is made of synthetic DNA. In addition to being the stuff genes are made of, DNA can serve as a building block for self-assembling materials. Single strands of DNA will lock onto other single stands that have complementary coding, like tiny organic Legos. By synthesizing DNA with carefully arranged complementary sections Luo’s [Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering] research team previously created short stands that link into shapes such as crosses or Y’s, which in turn join at the ends to form meshlike structures to form the first successful all-DNA hydrogel. Trying a new approach, they mixed synthetic DNA with enzymes that cause DNA to self-replicate and to extend itself into long chains, to make a hydrogel without DNA linkages.

“During this process they entangle, and the entanglement produces a 3-D network,” Luo explained. But the result was not what they expected: The hydrogel they made flows like a liquid, but when placed in water returns to the shape of the container in which it was formed.

“This was not by design,” Luo said.

See the material for yourself,

Hydrogels made in the form of the letters D, N and A collapse into a liquid-like state on their own but return to the original shape when surrounded by water Provided/Luo Lab

Nature Nanotechnology published the team’s research online Dec. 2, 2012 and, unusually, the article is open access (at least for now),

A mechanical metamaterial made from a DNA hydrogel by Jong Bum Lee, Songming Peng, Dayong Yang,  Young Hoon Roh, Hisakage Funabashi, Nokyoung Park, Edward J. Rice, Liwei Chen, Rong Long, Mingming Wu & Dan Luo in Nature Nanotechnology  (2012) doi:10.1038/nnano.2012.211 published online Dec. 2, 2012

Depending on your reading interests and time available, Bill Steele’s Cornell University article has more detail than I’ve provided here or you can check out the well illustrated article in Nature Nanotechnology. As these things go, it’s quite readable as you can see with the abstract (Note: I have removed footnotes),

Metamaterials are artificial substances that are structurally engineered to have properties not typically found in nature. To date, almost all metamaterials have been made from inorganic materials such as silicon and copper, which have unusual electromagnetic or acoustic properties that allow them to be used, for example, as invisible cloaks superlenses or super absorbers for sound. Here, we show that metamaterials with unusual mechanical properties can be prepared using DNA as a building block. We used a polymerase enzyme to elongate DNA chains and weave them non-covalently into a hydrogel. The resulting material, which we term a meta-hydrogel, has liquid-like properties when taken out of water and solid-like properties when in water. Moreover, upon the addition of water, and after complete deformation, the hydrogel can be made to return to its original shape. The meta-hydrogel has a hierarchical internal structure and, as an example of its potential applications, we use it to create an electric circuit that uses water as a switch.

For anyone not familiar with the Terminator movies, here’s an essay in Wikipedia about the ‘franchise’. Pay special note to the second movie in the series, Terminator 2: Judgment Day which introduced a robot (played by Robert Patrick) that could morph from a liquidlike state into various lethal entities.