Mussels may do a lot more for us than just offering us a delicious vehicle for butter and garlic (or tomato and peppers or sausage and shallots). Scientists are now studying the way that mussels stick to slippery rocks to make pre-natal surgery a much safer option.
When doctors are performing surgery on a fetus, one precarious reality is that they have to stick their instruments through the incredibly fragile amniotic sac, which can be very difficult to repair. But now, using the ingredient that mussels use to cling like hell to a wet rock, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a glue that might save a lot of lives.
