The discovery, led by University College London (United Kingdom) and published in the journal ‘Nanoscale Advances’, This does not mean that these spaghetti are a new food, but rather that they were created due to the wide uses that extremely fine strands of a material – called nanofibers – have in medicine and industry.
Nanofibers made of starch, produced by most green plants to store excess glucose, They are especially promising and could be used in bandages to aid wound healing.
The mats of these nanofibers are very porous, which allows the entry of water and humidity, but prevents the entry of bacteria, with so these strands can be used as a scaffold for bone regeneration and for drug administration.
However, they depend on starch being extracted from plant cells and purified, a process that requires a lot of energy and water.
A more environmentally friendly method, according to researchers, is to create nanofibers directly from a starchy ingredient such as flour, which is the base of pasta.
fine paste
The authors of the study describe how to make spaghetti that is just 372 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter using a technique called electrospinning, in which threads of flour and liquid are pulled through the tip of a needle using an electrical charge.
“To make spaghetti, you pass a mixture of water and flour through metal holes. In our study, we did the same thing, except we passed the flour mixture through them with an electrical charge. “It’s literally spaghetti, but much smaller,” says Adam Clancy of University College London.
Researchers describe the second-finest pasta known, called ‘filindeu’ (‘threads of God’), handmade by a pasta maker in the Sardinian city of (Italy).
It is estimated that this ‘pasta lunga’ (‘long pasta’) It is about 400 microns wide, 1,000 times thicker than the new electrospun creationwhich, at 372 nanometers, is narrower than some wavelengths of light.
“Promising material”
The novel ‘nanopaste’ formed a mat of nanofibers about two centimeters in diameter, so it is visible, but each individual strand is too narrow to be clearly captured. by any type of visible light camera or microscope, so their widths were measured with a scanning electron microscope.
“Nanofibers, such as those made from starch, have potential to be used in wound dressings, as they are very porous. Additionally, nanofibers are being studied for use as scaffolds to regenerate tissue, as they “mimic the extracellular matrix, a network of proteins and other molecules that cells build to support themselves,” says Gareth Williams, from the School of Pharmacy at University College London.
Clancy adds: “Starch is a promising material to use, as it is abundant and renewable (it is the second largest source of biomass on Earth, behind cellulose) and is biodegradable, meaning it can be broken down in the body.”
This author indicates that “purifying starch requires a lot of processing.” “We have shown that it is possible to create nanofibers in a simpler way from flour. The next step would be to investigate the properties of this product. “We want to know, for example, how quickly it disintegrates, how it interacts with cells and if it can be produced on a large scale,” he points out.
Williams specifies: “Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be useful as a pasta, as it would overcook in less than a second, before you can remove it from the pan.”
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