Congratulations to Steve Lippard upon receipt of the Priestley Medal!  Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley and Steve has made a great career from studying, amongst many things, how oxygen reacts with iron in biology.  Our laboratory is trying to understand the nature of marine bioadhesion.  How do organisms such as mussels and oysters stick themselves to rocks at the beach?  Sure enough, we are finding that iron-oxygen chemistry is in there.  This presentation will include the latest findings on characterization and synthetic mimics of these intriguing biological materials.  Work with oysters is showing that adhesion is brought about by a partitioning of the organic and inorganic components within cement.  Polymer mimics of these materials are yielding adhesives with performance stronger than commercial Super Glue and also quite substantial underwater bonding.

Shellfish are inorganic chemists:  Characterization and synthetic mimics of marine biological adhesives

247th National Meeting (2014)

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