Catching up! Rational design of bio-inspired catch bonds

Summary

Living organisms are constantly exposed to mechanical forces, such as gravity, air pressure, or forces between organisms. To cope with these forces, biological materials have developed catch bonds: protein bonds that become stronger as they are placed under increasing forces. Thanks to these catch bonds, many biological materials are easily deformable at low forces but stable at high forces. If such catch bonds could also be incorporated into synthetic materials, we could develop a new kind of material that is both deformable and strong. In this research, we have developed the first artificial catch bonds to make this possible.