Functional Biocompatible Matrices from Mussel Byssus Waste

The mussel byssus is a biorenewable, protein-based material produced by marine mussels, which has attracted the interest of material scientists because of its remarkable mechanical and self-healing properties. Large quantities of byssus waste material from mussel mariculture are produced every year, which have great potential as a raw starting material for producing sustainable advanced materials. In this work, we developed a facile and scalable method to synthesize whole byssus-based porous matrices that retain part of the hierarchical organization of the pristine material at the nanoscale. The resulting material is biocompatible and maintains important native byssus features: metal ion chelation (>= 12 mg/g), collagen domains, and hierarchical organization, with tunable properties controlled via metal ion content. Furthermore, these biocompatible matrices showed a dye absorbing efficiency (up to 64 mg/g for anionic dyes) that was similar to or higher than that of the pristine byssus, a proof of preservation of structural motifs. These findings indicate that biorenewable matrices originating from byssus waste could have potential use in biomedical engineering and applied material science.