| Author: Peter Del Bosque
Founder of Socialeaf, Peter's bio can be found by clicking on this Google+ link.
The porcupine may not necessarily be the fastest animal on 4 paws, or the most cunning, but they certainly shouldn’t be tangled with. Most predators avoid these mighty bundles of fur and spines for fear that their face will be impaled upon by their gruesomely long spines. There are plenty of folktales about how porcupines got their quills and how they can be used to defend themselves, like the African folktale about the porcupine and the Jackal but, despite the folklore that surrounds these beautiful creatures, there is one thing for certain, they have amazing quill architecture.
The quills aren’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill, needle-like spines. They have a secret. They are unique in that they can enter fleshy tissue quickly and easily however, pulling a quill out that has entered the skin is another story.
The quill is a sharp needle like hair that contains a tiny barb at the end of it. Each of these barbs are like very sharp razor blades. They are so sharp that when a barb is pushed against flesh, it slices easily through without struggle, sort of like when a fish bites down on a barbed fishhook. Its point looks almost like a checkmark and can’t be pulled out easily once it’s imbedded. If and when a quill is pulled, it will rip the tender flesh from where the hair-like barbs are anchored.
Recently Dr.Karp at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in colaboration with researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have found a new way to put the quill technology to some good use.
Some of Dr. Karp's more popular discoveries include the use of spiderwebs as a gentle adhesive for premature babies. He is also the inventor of a Jellyfish tentacle inspired DNA chain that is used to filter out tumor cells from a patients blood.
First of all, there has always been a need for a proper surgical adhesion methods in emergency situations and researchers think quill technology could be the answer. In the past, there have been a variety of inventions to help bind fleshy tissue to fleshy tissue. For example, surgical bandages, Band-Aids, staples, glue, string stitches and Velcro. Although there are a variety of products that can be used to help mend flesh wounds.
The basic idea is that a patch can be created with biodegradable quills that can painlessly puncture into the fleshy area that needs to be covered. Since the quills will be biodegradable, there would be no need to pull the patch off after the wound heals. The patch will simply fall off on its own.
Despite the great potential of this medical technology, researches have yet to create a viable model of the quill adhesive that will biodegrade at the proper time and that will be easier to remove in case it was placed on the wrong spot in error.
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