Superheroes of the microbe world series #2: The bacteria who puts superglue and Spiderman’s web to shame.

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Hello fellow Steemians,

Welcome back to another episode of Superheroes of the microbe world series, a series where we take a look at bacteria with superpower that only exist in comic books. In the last episode, we learned about the incredibly strong bacteria which possesses super strength, strong enough to land itself the title of the Strongest organism on Earth
If you missed that one out, don’t worry about it, definitely check out that post here: Superheroes of the microbe world series #1: The Superman of bacteria

In this episode, we’ll take a look at a bacteria that is capable of producing adhesive so strong, it would make Spiderman wish to be bitten by it (Sadly, it doesn’t have any teeth)

Enter Caulobacter crescentus

The adhesive produced by this bacteria was first described in 2006 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Prior to this, Caulobacter is an organism that serves as the model for studying regulation of the cell cycle, asymmetric cell division, and cellular differentiation. The reason to this is because one of the many interesting feature of this cell is that its daughter cells can have two very different form; A swarmer cell and a stalked cell

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A Sticky situation

This organism is usually found on wet surfaces like boat hulls and once it colonises the surface and sticks to it, it’s really really tough to clean it off even when using pressure washer. How it does this is by applying its glue precisely and efficiently. To do this, it extends its flagellum to make contact with a surface and once contact has been established, nearby pili jump in to stabilise the contact and keep it from moving.

After further stabilisation has occurred, it produces its glue to really stick to the said surface. The main ingredient of the adhesive is polysaccharides, a long-chain carbohydrate and the reason why the organism loves to stick around (pun intended) is because this allows them to establish a stable environment for potential food to settle.

Nobody’s going to love me better, I must stick with you forever

(Oh god if you sang along to that, you’re either a 90’s kid or you have a good taste in music)

In the research field, scientists have been studying other aspects of C. crescentus but following the realisation of how hard it was to remove the organisms from glass plates, they decided to study its adhesive properties.

They grew the individual bacteria cell on the surface of the tip of a flexible pipette and then used a second pipette to try and pull the cell off. Based on how far the first pipette bent before the cell came loose, they were able to calculate the force involved and subsequently, the adhesive strength of the glue produced.

The result was that It took 70 Newton per millimeter square to rip of the cell from the surface of the pipette. With an adhesive force of nearly five tons per square inch, this "glue" is one of nature's strongest. To help you visualise how sticky that is;

• It sticks 7 times stronger than the famous footpads of geckos
• 3 times stronger adhesion than a commercial superglue

To further help you imagine how strong of an adhesive force that is, that means that just a quarter-sized spot of the glue is strong enough to suspend at least 3 cars!

Take that you friendly neighbourhood Spiderman!

Possible application

As mentioned before, the bacteria is usually found on wet surfaces and because of that, they’re looking for a possible application of its stickiness as a surgical adhesive, implying that it could be in operating room near you soon. It could be produced by culturing the bacterium and subsequently have the precise composition manufactured for commercial use.

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Thank you for reading.

References:

1)Bacterium makes nature's strongest glue
2)Bacterial 'Glue' is One of Nature's Stickiest Substances
3)World's Strongest Glue! Available Only from Nature!