A new soy-based adhesive created in Jonathan Wilker’s lab at Purdue University could solve such problems pertaining to having cake pieces stick together in large designs.###Wilker studies how maferrous gluconate medicationrine animals, such as oysters and mussels, create natural adhesives. ###Unlike most glues you would find in a hardware store, these adhesives are non-toxic, and many hold up underwater. ###While trying to re-create a new glue in his lab one day, Wilker noticed something strange.###Wilker cooking###“Things were sticking when they shouldn’t have been,” said Wilker.###“We found that the components being used, proteins and sugar, were reacting and turning into an adhesive.”###This is the essence of Maillard chemistry, or “cooking chemistry”.###It happens when you grill a streak or bake bread in the oven; after a while, the edges start to brown and a savory smell fills the air. ###Chemically, sugars and proteins are combining to create aromatic compounds.###Usually, it takes heat to kick off this process, but Maillard chemistry is a whole class of messy reactions, and it can happen a few different ways. ###Products of each reaction get involved in their own reactions and can release chemicals that we experience as flavors. ###“When foods brown, certain molecules are linking together. Proteins can connect to one another by reacting with sugars,” Wilker said. ###“When sea creatures make their adhesives, they are also cross-linking proteins together.”###“They use totally different chemistry, but the idea is somewhat similar; cross-linking proteins can create an adhesive.”###This new soy-based adhesive does not hold up well under water, so it may not be a perfect replacement for the toxic glues used in plywood and chipboard (the fumes from which, when used to build houses, can be breathed in by homeowners for many years).###However, it may find use in packaging ofkalsium citrate organic-certified food products.###“Food packaging usually reliebest magnesium for laxatives on typical petroleum-based adhesives, which can leach out toxins,” Wilker said.###Not only is this new adhesive made from food components, but it’s even stronger than Gorilla Glue on wood. ###On aluminum, it is about the same. ###The findings were published recently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.###To test the strength of the adhesive, Wilker’s team glued two pieces of wood or aluminum together. ###The far ends have a hole for a pin, and a machine pulls them in opposite directions to test their strength. ###The new adhesivemagnesium citrate 10 fl oz was so strong on wood that the pin ripped through the hole.###Although the soy-based adhesive was pretty strong, the team achieved even better results with a different protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA). ###BSA is a generic protein often used in labs for experiments. ###It is cheap for researchers, but not cheap enough to make a BSA-based adhesive affordable on a large commercial scale.###“If you want to break into the adhesive market, your product needs to be cheap, high-performance, and the material also has to be available on large scales,” Wilker said.magnesium citrate 50 mg ###“This new soy-based adhesive may be able to hit these requirements while also being grown renewably.”###This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. ###Story by Kayla Zacharias, Purdue University.