Integrative biology of fiber-reinforced slime in hagfishes

Chapman University received a $728,724 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Emerging Frontiers under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), effective September 1, 2025, through August 31, 2028. This research project focuses on investigating the integrative biology of fiber-reinforced defensive slime secretions produced by hagfishes, ancient deep-sea organisms. The primary research deliverables include advancing understanding of the biophysical mechanisms enabling hagfish slime to expand approximately 10,000 times in less than 0.4 seconds through high-speed video analysis and laboratory studies, and characterizing how slime composition and properties vary across the 90+ hagfish species worldwide, with particular emphasis on eight species endemic to the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador.

The research is expected to produce fundamental scientific knowledge regarding biomaterial synthesis and deployment mechanisms that are unique in biology, alongside potential innovations applicable to practical fields such as fire suppression technology. Additional project outputs include workforce development through student involvement, research training, and broader societal impacts aligned with NSF's emphasis on advancing the biological sciences and strengthening the nation's scientific enterprise. The research will be conducted at Chapman University's location in Orange, California.

Abstract

Hagfishes are a group of ancient fishes that are best known for their ability to fend off predators including sharks by producing huge volumes of fibrous slime in the blink of an eye. This research project focuses on hagfish slime and has two main goals. The first is to understand how hagfishes can make liters of this material in a fraction of a second. To do this we will study slime deployment in the laboratory using a custom high-speed video setup. The second goal is to investigate the slime defense trait in the more than 90 species of hagfishes in the world to better understand how they make this fascinating material and how IT evolved. Our study will focus on a place that has eight species of hagfishes in a small area ? The galapagos islands in ecuador. With its unique mixture of mucus and silk-like fibers, hagfish defensive slime has material properties that are unlike any synthetic material made by humans. Understanding the mechanisms of its synthesis and deployment could lead to important innovations in applications such as fire suppression. This project will investigate the fiber-reinforced defensive secretions created by the deep-sea animals known as hagfishes. Hagfishes are known to defend themselves from fish predators using an ultra-dilute fibrous biomaterial that they eject from specialized slime glands, but little is known about how this material deploys in seawater or how IT differs among the 90+ species of hagfishes. In this project, we will elucidate the biophysical mechanisms that allow hagfish glandular slime to expand by 10,000 times in less than 0.4 seconds, and we will characterize how this material varies among hagfish species that differ in phylogeny, body size, depth range, habitat, and lifestyle. This research will illuminate the properties and underlying mechanisms of a biomaterial that is unique in biology and will provide numerous positive societal impacts including student, postdoctoral, and teacher training, science outreach, and inspiration for a new class of industrial materials, including novel water-based materials that could be used for fire suppression. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.