How Tick Saliva Could Revolutionize Medical Adhesives

casualSTEM delivers brief and informative summaries of the latest science news every Saturday. Full of jokes, silly polls, and a cartoon!

Tick Spit

The secret to ticks’ cling-strength: cement. Their saliva contains a bioadhesive that creates a cement cone to stay snug.

• Uniquely adheres to living tissue (unlike mussel or spider bioadhesives)

• Key ingredient: glycine-rich protein GRP77

• Becomes cement-like when exposed to salt

Researchers successfully replicated tick saliva’s bonding strength with synthetic spit, potentially leading to improved medical bioadhesives and anti-tick vaccines. Anyone else check for ticks after reading this?

Tick talk

Catch-up on science in sweatpants