Contact: Lee Siegel
leesiegel@ucomm.utah.edu
801-581-8993
University of Utah

A Chunk of Sandcastle Worm Colony

Caption: This photo shows the circular openings of many tube-shaped homes for sandcastle worms in a chunk removed from a sandcastle colony in the intertidal zone on California's coast. The worms make the tubes using their own natural glue and tiny pieces of shell and sand. University of Utah bioengineer have synthesized an artificial version of that glue and hope it will be perfected and then used for gluing together broken bone fragments in human joints like the knees, wrists, elbows, ankles and other joints.

Credit: Fred Hayes for the University of Utah.

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