Researchers have engineered bacteria to produce a natural adhesive intended to repair ships or help wounds and surgical incisions to heal.

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was inspired by the sticky proteins that help mussels, barnacles and other shellfish stick to rocks and the hulls of ships, said a school news release.

Detailing their findings in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the MIT researchers developed bacteria that produce a protein hybrid. The new material combines naturally adhesive proteins from mussels with bacterial protein from biofilms, which form when bacteria grows on a surface.

Mussel foot proteins are what help the shellfish attach to rocks and ship hulls.

"A lot of underwater organisms need to be able to stick to things, so they make all sorts of different types of adhesives that you might be able to borrow from," lead study author Timothy Lu, an associate professor of biological engineering and electrical engineering and computer science, said in a statement.

The newly engineered adhesives are even stronger than the naturally sticky mussel proteins. So far, the researchers have only been able to make small quantities of the adhesive, but they are developing the process to allow for larger amounts.

"We're trying to figure out if by adding other mussel foot proteins, we can increase the adhesive strength even more and improve the material's robustness," Lu said.

The research team hopes their next development will be "living glues" made of bacteria film that can sense damage to a surface and automatically repair it with adhesive.

"The ultimate goal for us is to set up a platform where we can start building materials that combine multiple different functional domains together and to see if that gives us better materials performance," Lu said.

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