A review on process and characterization of mussels and cirripeds for adhesive properties and applications thereof

Adhesives plays an important role in industries and our daily life, mostly they are chemically processed like cyanoacrylates which are proved to be harmful for the environment thus there were many trials with various natural source. Amongst all the marine organism had the ability to adhere to surface naturally, they proved to have an adhesive part which forms a plaque or cement that allows the attachment of organisms to the sea bed. Further analysis led to the preparation of temporary, instantaneous, permanent and transitory adhesives wherein mussels and tubeworms were involved in permanent adhesion, limpets for transitory adhesion, sea stars for temporary adhesion, and sea cucumbers for instantaneous adhesion. The bonding and tensile strength of the adhesives was verified by conducting various tests to check if the adhesive improves performance. In this review we have focused on different isolation, extraction and characterization processes involved in the preparation of adhesives from marine organisms including their application in the field of medicine, engineering, biotechnology and environment.