Editorial: Bioadhesion

Abstract

Materials and systems preventing the separation of two surfaces may be defined as adhesives. There are a variety of natural adhesive devices based on entirely mechanical principles, while others additionally rely on the chemistry of polymers and colloids. Adhesive organs are functional systems, the purpose of which is either temporary or permanent attachment of an organism to the substrate surface, to another organism, or temporary interconnection of body parts within an organism. Their design varies enormously and is subject to different functional loads. There is no doubt that many functional solutions have evolved independently in different lineages of organisms. Many species of animals and plants are supplied with diverse adhesive surfaces, the morphology of which depends on the species biology, and the particular function in which the adhesive device is involved. There are numerous publications on cell adhesion phenomena, but much fewer references are devoted to the non-specific adhesion of living organisms. Because of the structural, mechanical, and chemical complexity of biological surfaces related to adhesion, exact working mechanisms have been clarified only for some systems. In this Research Topic (RT) “Bioadhesion”, we aimed at collecting articles dealing with biological surfaces and systems specialized for adhesion enhancement. These contributions discuss adhesive function of biological surfaces and their relationship with the structure, contact mechanics and chemistry of surfaces. Because of the diversity of functions in adhesion-related biological surfaces, biology could provide interesting inspirations for a broad range of topics in physics, chemistry, and engineering. In the following, we briefly introduce the 13 articles comprising this RT. They can be broadly divided into four categories: 1) bacterial adhesion, 2) plant adhesion, 3) animal adhesion, and 4) biomimetic adhesion.