Cellulose

Cellulose is being looked at very closely around the world because of its unique properties and is a renewable resource. Cellulose is a polysaccharide, usually found in plants is a long chain of sugars joined together and is being used for a number of different medical applications such as dressings, main component of paper and certain textiles such as cotton. This is now used for creating skeletal muscle tissue.

Nano whiskers

Minute nanoscale whiskers obtained from sea creatures can be used to create working human muscle tissue. cellulose from tunicates, commonly known as sea squirts, can influence the behaviour of skeletal muscle cells in the laboratory. These nanostructures are the smallest physical feature found to cause cell alignment. Body muscle contains aligned fibres gives strength and stiffness.

Tunicates grow on rocks and human-made structures in coastal waters around the world. Cellulose extracted from tunicates is particularly well suited for making muscle tissue due to its unique properties. Researchers chemically extracted the cellulose in the form of nanowhiskers. When aligned and parallel to each other, they cause rapid muscle cell alignment and fusion and this method is both simple and relatively quick.

Uses

This discovery could lead doctors and scientists to create the normal aligned architecture of skeletal muscle tissue. This tissue could be used to help repair existing muscle or even grow muscle from scratch, creating artificial tissue to replace damaged or diseased human muscles.