The current gold standard for bone grafting surgery includes autografts and allografts, although a growing demand exists to develop synthetic biomaterials for enhanced bio-integration in bone tissue engineering. In a new report now published on Nature Communications Materials, Hideo Fushimi and a research team in bioscience and engineering, and reconstructive biotechnology in Japan and the U.S., developed a biodegradable scaffold material using recombinant proteins or polypeptides as a source of hydrogel-based graft materials. The team used human type I collagen alpha 1 chain (abbreviated RCPhC1) as a source to develop the recombinant polypeptide and demonstrated the flexibility of the material to engineer ideal characteristics for bone grafts. The team also developed RCPhC1 bone grafts using a highly scalable, streamlined production protocol for the robust generation of mature bone tissue in the lab. The bone graft completely resorbed after tissue regeneration in a preclinical animal model for effective biological integration.