Paintable proteins provide environmentally friendly way to protect ship hulls at sea

Within minutes of a ship's hull being submerged in seawater, a complex web of life starts to develop: bacteria, algae, tube worms, barnacles and mussels

This adhesion of organisms, known as biofouling, increases drag and fuel consumption and leads to costly corrosion but many of the existing methods to prevent it are toxic.

Antifouling coatings, which slow the growth of organisms, typically rely on the toxicity of copper and small-molecule additives that act as pesticides in the water near a ship's hull. These poisonous paints leach into the seawater and destroy aquatic life.

Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have developed a nontoxic, environmentally friendly paintable protein that inhibits fouling. The APL team published its results in the Journal of Coatings Technology and Research.

Researchers have identified active proteins, or enzymes, as potential nontoxic antifouling agents. But no one had developed an effective way to bind enzymes onto a specific location while maintaining their functionality. Enzymes must be covalently, or chemically, attached to a surface to maintain their antifouling properties.