IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v5y2014i1d10.1038_ncomms6665.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Synthetic fossilization of soft biological tissues and their shape-preserving transformation into silica or electron-conductive replicas

Author

Listed:
  • Jason L. Townson

    (The University of New Mexico
    Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The University of New Mexico)

  • Yu-Shen Lin

    (The University of New Mexico
    Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The University of New Mexico)

  • Stanley S. Chou

    (Advanced Materials Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories)

  • Yasmine H. Awad

    (Center for Micro-Engineered Materials, The University of New Mexico)

  • Eric N. Coker

    (Advanced Materials Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories)

  • C. Jeffrey Brinker

    (Advanced Materials Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories
    The University of New Mexico)

  • Bryan Kaehr

    (Advanced Materials Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories
    The University of New Mexico)

Abstract

Structural preservation of complex biological systems from the subcellular to whole organism level in robust forms, enabling dissection and imaging while preserving 3D context, represents an enduring grand challenge in biology. Here we report a simple immersion method for structurally preserving intact organisms via conformal stabilization within silica. This self-limiting process, which we refer to as silica bioreplication, occurs by condensation of water-soluble silicic acid proximally to biomolecular interfaces throughout the organism. Conformal nanoscopic silicification of all biomolecular features imparts structural rigidity enabling the preservation of shape and nano-to-macroscale dimensional features upon drying to form a biocomposite and further high temperature oxidative calcination to form silica replicas or reductive pyrolysis to form electrically conductive carbon replicas of complete organisms. The simplicity and generalizability of this approach should facilitate efforts in biological preservation and analysis and could enable the development of new classes of biomimetic composite materials.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason L. Townson & Yu-Shen Lin & Stanley S. Chou & Yasmine H. Awad & Eric N. Coker & C. Jeffrey Brinker & Bryan Kaehr, 2014. "Synthetic fossilization of soft biological tissues and their shape-preserving transformation into silica or electron-conductive replicas," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 1-8, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms6665
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6665
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6665
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms6665?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms6665. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.