📢 New AFM Publication: Why Fish Intermuscular Bones Stretch Like No Other

 Our lab is proud to share the publication of our new article in Advanced Functional Materials, titled:

“Investigating the Remarkable Deformability of Intermuscular Bones in Teleost Fish: Insights from Porous Networks and Mineralization Patterns.”
DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202512383

🔍 What we discovered

Intermuscular bones (IB) in herring are unusual mineralized tissues: they combine bone-like strength with tendon-like stretchability. Using thermogravimetric analysis, in situ SAXS tensile testing, and synchrotron nanoCT, we show that:

  • Larger (older) fish have IB that deform up to ~4.5% strain, nearly double that of smaller fish.

  • Nearly 100% of the applied tissue strain is transferred to collagen fibrils in larger fish — a behavior closer to tendons than to bone.

  • NanoCT reveals a layered mineralization pattern and a highly connected porous network (≈180% more porosity in large fish), aligned along the bone’s long axis.

  • These structural heterogeneities help explain why IB can be both strong and highly deformable.

💡 Why it matters

IB are essentially ossified tendons, and their architecture breaks the usual trade-off between stiffness and stretchability seen in mineralized tissues. This makes them an exciting natural model for designing new composite biomaterials that need both strength and controlled deformation.

👥 Collaboration

This work was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from ESRF, Advanced Light Source, INSA Lyon, UC Berkeley, UCSF, UC San Diego, and others.