Stuck on Mussels.

This article describes the efforts by J. Herbert Waite, a marine biochemist at the University of Delaware in Lewes, to learn how the marine mussel Mytilus edulis manufactures an underwater adhesive. For the past 20 years, Waite has made it his business to learn how the marine mussel, the indigo-shelled bivalve that often ends up in soups and appetizers, manufactures an underwater adhesive that ranks with the world's best. No synthetic glue designed for watery settings comes close to rivaling nature's own, he says. Sooner or later, water's many acts of adhesive vandalism cause synthetically bonded surfaces to come unglued, usually with the help of mechanical stresses. Water can chemically degrade or deform adhesive materials. Moisture can form a weak boundary between bonding surfaces. In cold settings, freezing and thawing can pry glued parts apart. Like oil and vinegar, adhesion and water just do not seem to mix. And that makes biological adhesives all the more enviable, Waite says. "All living things in nature are exquisitely assembled from adhesively bonded parts," he noted in October 1990 at a meeting on biomolecular materials in Washington, D.C. Despite constant encounters with water, plants and animals need no nuts, nails or bolts to keep from falling apart.