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At first, the idea of using porcupine quills to heal wounds seems tortuous. But, inspired by the spiky rodent, researchers began working on a new type of surgical staple that could be less damaging – and less effective. painful – that the current staples.
Surgeons worldwide perform more than 4 million operations a year, usually using sutures and staples to close wounds. Yet these traditional tools designed to help healing can create their own problems.
"We've been using sutures and staples for decades and they've been incredibly helpful," says Jeff Karp, a bioengineering engineer at Brigham and Women's Boston Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "But it is difficult to place them for minimally invasive procedures."
Surgical staples are faster to insert than sutures, which require a needle and thread, he explains. But the current staples, made of metal, rip the fabric in and cause more damage when it is bent to stay in place.
The tip of the can of this finger has microscopic barbs pointing back which make it difficult to remove. Bioengineers believe that the same kind of beards could help keep in place soluble medical staples until a wound heals.
Josh Cassidy / KQED
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Josh Cassidy / KQED
Karp and his team looked for new ways to keep the tissues together.
A brainstorming session led to a discussion about a porcupine and its pen.
The North American porcupine looks cute, but has over 30,000 threatening feathers covering a large part of his body, each one hollow and two to three inches long. The slow-moving herbivore only uses feathers as a last resort against predators.
The quills are in fact specialized hairs and usually lie flat against the body of the animal. The porcupine will only raise them when it is threatened. And, contrary to a common myth, porcupines do not draw quills from their bodies.
"What's wonderful with porcupines, is that they seem to feel safe," said Uldis Roze, professor emeritus of biology at Queens College of City University in New York. "They feel like they're not in danger and they're nice."
When the porcupine is relaxed, its other hairs and fur hide most quills.
According to Roze's book, the adult porcupine displays three types of warnings before taking it to himself. The North American porcupine. First, the contrasting black and white pattern of quills and other animal hairs – known as aposematic coloring – is a visual warning signal. A unique pungent odor and threatening teeth are additional clues that dogs, mountain lions and other potential predators should stay out of the way.
The North American porcupine looks cute, but has over 30,000 threatening feathers covering a large part of its body. The slow-moving herbivore only uses them as a defense of last resort against predators.
Lindsay Wildlife's Experience
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Lindsay Wildlife's Experience
The North American porcupine looks cute, but has over 30,000 threatening feathers covering a large part of its body. The slow-moving herbivore only uses them as a defense of last resort against predators.
Lindsay Wildlife's Experience
If that does not work, a porcupine will use its powerful spiky tail to slap at the attacker. Each feather is held in place by its own special structure in the skin of the porcupine. Direct physical contact With a predator, the skin of the porcupine frees the feather.
Pig quills in North America have a hidden talent: microscopic whiskers pointing to the back.
These only cover the needle-shaped point of the feathers, making their removal difficult, as they flare when pulled in a direction opposite to where they entered.
This means that if a predator is planted, the feather might never come out. When scientists examine the skulls of dead mountain lions, Roze explains, they often discover that porcupine quill spikes are embedded in the jaws of the lions' jaws.
"The mountain lion simply accepts it," Roze said. "It's part of the job of killing a porcupine."
Of course, the porcupine feast of this mountain lion can end forever if the feathers prevent it from eating or end up in the cat's vulnerable internal organs.
This image of a scanning electron microscope attaches to the tiny barbs located on the tip of a porcupine quill.
Courtesy of Woo Kyung Cho
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Courtesy of Woo Kyung Cho
This image of a scanning electron microscope attaches to the tiny barbs located on the tip of a porcupine quill.
Courtesy of Woo Kyung Cho
Yet a feather running through the body is far from painless – it's atrocious – as Roze knows from personal experience. He was once planted in his biceps while he was in a tree, trying to catch an agile porcupine.
Although his wife later suggested seeking immediate medical attention, he waited for two very painful days. At that time, the feather had traveled in one direction and was properly out of his forearm. He kept the pen in memory.
The feather barbs facilitated his penetration into his flesh. They also helped push the pen deeper until it came out (although it would have been stopped by harder material like bone).
These are the beards that interest most Karp. He and his team conducted experiments comparing a barbed feather to a barbless feather, measuring the forces needed to insert and remove the barbed spears.
The researchers found that unlike a feather without a pin or a surgical staple – which tears tissue and creates gaps that can cause infection – the design of the barbed feathers minimizes damage along the way.
Left: A microscopic image compares the tip size of a North American porcupine feather to the tip of a narrow 18-gauge needle. Right: in a pig- live epic, the partially hidden quills usually lie flat on the body of the herbivore, in the middle of other hairs, until, and unless called, at the # 39; action.
Josh Cassidy / KQED
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Josh Cassidy / KQED
A new type of medical staple with two barbed ends would require much less straining effort, according to Karp's numbers, and the barb grip would keep it in position without having to bend the staple.
Karp says he plans to make the new staples out of biodegradable material so that they dissolve completely over time without having to be removed.
The challenge now is to recreate the full shape of the beard.
"Nature has conceptions that humans can not yet realize, at least on a large scale," says Karp. "Large-scale manufacturing is a human problem."
But he believes that if the right technologies become available, testing on tools inspired by the porcupine feather by humans could begin in two to five years.
"It could make it easier to make small incisions in a lot of surgeries," says Karp. This would be good news for surgeons and patients.
This article and this video were produced by our friends from Deep look, a series of videos about wildlife KQED and PBS Digital Studios which explores "the invisible at the very edge of our visible world". KQED Josh Cassidy is the producer and director of photography for Deep look. Laura Shields works as an intern for the series.
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