{"id":109679,"date":"2020-07-08T11:04:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T18:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/new-biomaterial-could-shield-against-harmful-radiation"},"modified":"2020-07-08T11:04:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T18:04:55","slug":"new-biomaterial-could-shield-against-harmful-radiation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/new-biomaterial-could-shield-against-harmful-radiation","title":{"rendered":"New biomaterial could shield against harmful radiation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-biomaterial-could-shield-against-harmful-radiation.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>EVANSTON, Ill.\u2014 Packing for outer space? Here\u2019s one thing you won\u2019t want to forget.<\/p>\n<p>Northwestern University researchers have synthesized a new form of melanin enriched with selenium. Called selenomelanin, this new biomaterial shows extraordinary promise as a shield for human tissue against harmful radiation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven the increased interest in space travel, and the general need for lightweight, multifunctional and radioprotective biomaterials, we\u2019ve become excited about the potential of melanin,\u201d said Northwestern\u2019s Nathan Gianneschi, who led the research. \u201cIt occurred to our postdoctoral fellow Wei Cao that melanin containing selenium would offer better protection than other forms of melanin. That brought up the intriguing possibility that this as-yet undiscovered melanin may very well exist in nature, being used in this way. So we skipped the discovery part and decided to make it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EVANSTON, Ill.\u2014 Packing for outer space? Here\u2019s one thing you won\u2019t want to forget. Northwestern University researchers have synthesized a new form of melanin enriched with selenium. Called selenomelanin, this new biomaterial shows extraordinary promise as a shield for human tissue against harmful radiation. \u201cGiven the increased interest in space travel, and the general need [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}