The COVID Vaccine's Secret Ingredient

Vaccines: the technology has been a source of controversy ever since it was created by Louis Pasteur in 1798, and perhaps never more so than in the last two years. The COVID vaccine has been followed by the media and people all over the world since COVID itself entered the world stage--from its original production, testing, and distribution, to the political divides and government skepticism that followed. However, despite the intimate knowledge many have gained about the vaccine process over the course of the last couple years, there is still an interesting fact about the vaccine that most people are unaware of.

Someone receiving a COVID vaccine

Enter Limulus polyphemus, better known as the horseshoe crab--one of the most interesting creatures to ever crawl upon the Earth. Many people, especially here on the East Coast, have seen horseshoe crabs at one point or another while at the beach. Whether they are live and scuttling underfoot in the waves, or in the form of remnants of a shell washing up on the beach, catching sight of them isn't all that uncommon. They are relatively unassuming creatures, most are a dull brown color with a large, dome-shaped shell and long, pointed tail. The tail is harmless and is used to help the crabs flip themselves over if they ever get tossed upside down by a wave, not to sting people like my dad had told me as a kid. So, pretty boring, right? Wrong. This small, slightly creepy, creature is one of the oldest organisms on earth, remaining almost entirely unchanged for the last 445 million years. That is absolutely insane. Totally bonkers. That predates dinosaurs, predates trees, predates like--basically everything that isn't an amoeba! Their design is simple, but has helped them to outlive almost every other species. Makes sense that their moniker would be the "living fossil."

A cute little Atlantic horseshoe crab

Despite being called crabs, Limulus polyphemus are actually more related to scorpions and spiders than other crabs. They are arthropods, with a hard exoskeleton but no spine, and ten jointed legs they use to navigate themselves around the ocean floor and crush food before moving it to their mouths. It's kind of hard to find a creature to accurately compare them to because they are the only living species left in their phylum. 

A scary little Atlantic horseshoe crab

Every year like clockwork, these incredible little creeps flock to the beach to breed and lay eggs before returning to the ocean. They almost always come during a full or new moon, and always to the same beach with migration patterns that have lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. During late May/early June, a male will find a female in the shallows and hitch a ride on her tail to the beach. When they arrive the female will then dig small holes and lay millions of small, light blue eggs, and then the male will go through and fertilize them all. Most of the eggs will be eaten by other animals around the beach, they're a main food source for many bird species, but after about two weeks the eggs will hatch. Thousands of baby horseshoe crabs (which look exactly like the adults except without tails) will return to the water.

A handful of horseshoe crab eggs. They kinda remind me of robin eggs but in miniature. 

For the rest of the year the beaches will be deserted by the crabs, but during the month of May thousands of them all come at once and often cover beaches to the point where sand is no longer visible. One of the most popular breeding grounds is right in our backyard--the Delaware Bay. Some tourists come to see the weird sight, but there are also others waiting anxiously by to see them as well. If I asked you to take a guess at who these onlookers might be, I bet the first thing out of your mouth wouldn't be pharmacists. But low and behold, they're there. In droves. 

A whole lotta horseshoe crabs

See, horseshoe crab blood is one of the only known sources for a chemical called limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL. LAL reacts with the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide, or LPS, which is a membrane component in gram-negative bacteria. When the amebocytes in the horseshoe blood (which is a bright blue color due to its copper base) interact with the endotoxins, it causes the blood to clot. In the wild this helps horseshoe crabs a ton because any bacteria getting into a cut on the organism will be immediately jello-ed up and isolated, halting any dangerous bacteria from entering the bloodstream. Humans rely heavily on horseshoe crab blood to create LAL for our medicinal uses. The compound is the basis for the LAL test, which is crucial to the sterilization testing that all surgical instruments, artificial body part replacements, injectable drugs, and vaccines undergo. If the LAL test isn't preformed and bacterial endotoxins go undetected, they can create an infection which can become deadly extremely fast. Since horseshoe crab blood is the only known source of LAL, without them this entire process would cease to exist, and everyone undergoing a vaccine or operation would be put at serious risk of infection and sepsis. Hence the pharmacists in Delaware Bay.

The pharmacists (or ecologists/fishermen who work for pharmaceutical companies) will come to the beaches during breeding season and capture thousands of crabs a day, putting them in transport containers to be taken to nearby processing facilities. Every year they round up half a million organisms on the East Coast alone. The crabs are then washed and sterilized, and put on a conveyor belt to have their blood sucked from them. It honestly looks like something out of a horror movie. They are hung upside down as technicians put an IV into a vein near the crab's heart, and then sit for a few hours as around 30% of their blood drips into a little bottle below. After the ordeal, around 30% of the crabs die, and the rest are returned to the ocean, through nobody really knows for sure how the crabs fare when they are released back into the wild and if the loss of blood affects them negatively or not. Some conservationists say survival rates could be improved with better treatment of the crabs, but better treatment is more expensive and pharmaceutical companies often aren't willing to pay the price.

Horseshoe crabs having their blood drained. Super weird, feels like something out of a sci-fi or horror movie or something

When the blood is all bottled up and ready to go, scientists will send it to another nearby pharmaceutical site. Some chemicals will be added to turn the blood into FDA approved LAL, which will then be put on the market at roughly $60,000 a gallon. Horseshoe crab blood ain't cheap. Although there are groups focused on finding a synthetic alternative to horseshoe blood as a source for LAL, everything they have produced so far is yet to be approved by all of the necessary groups needed for it to be considered a safe alternative for the standard, horseshoe-derived, version of LAL.

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A cute little juvenile horseshoe crab

Though the cost in crab lives may seem high, most conservationists say that the pharmaceutical industry isn't the biggest threat that horseshoe crabs face. In fact, many groups in the crab-draining industry work to pass legislation that help to preserve the crabs and their natural habitats, the most recent being laws passed in Maryland and Delaware making the use of horseshoe crabs as fishing bait illegal. But horseshoe crabs do face a great amount of danger. Every year they lose more of their precious breeding space on beaches due to erosion and human development on beaches, and ocean acidification due to climate change is causing pH levels in the Atlantic Ocean to no longer remain in the crabs' sensitive range. A more recent threat has been the intense red algal blooms that have been cropping up off the east coast from eutrophication due to human fertilizer run off.

A harmful red algal bloom in Nagasaki, Japan

During 2020, a record number of horseshoe crabs were captured to be used for sterilization of the millions of COVID vaccines being sent out around the country. Every time someone sat for their dose of the vaccine, there was a horseshoe crab's bright blue blood to thank. There was also a rather scary discovery made by a conservationist group from Maryland in 2020 during the height of COVID. It indicated that the horseshoe crab population was in severe decline, more than we had originally realized, due to habitat loss, climate change, and harvesting by pharmaceutical companies. Preserving these creatures is one of the many, many reasons climate change should be considered a top issue by legislators--it affects everything. Medicine, tourism, agriculture, the economy--quite literally everything. Nothing is left untouched by climate change, including the living fossil. Horseshoe crabs could outlast T-rexes and megalodons, meteors and volcanos, but it might not be able to outlast us. It's a pretty sobering thought.

A Whale-Sized Impact on the Environment

Whale hunting began thousands of years ago, and many countries grew dependent on this practice for whale oil and baleen. The Japanese and Norwegians were among the first countries to hunt whales and this began 4,000 years ago. Interestingly, one of the earliest methods of whale hunting was for multiple small boats of fishermen to surround the whale, scare it towards the shore, then kill it once it reached the beach. Whale meat and blubber were eaten as sources of protein, baleen (the flexible plates found inside the mouth of whales in order for them to filter food from the ocean) was used to make baskets and tools, and their bones were also used to make tools. Whaling gained popularity in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries in which whale oil was used for lamps and whale bone was used for fashion and more specifically for skirts and corsets. During the 17th century, the demand for whale products increased and therefore so did hunting. Whaling would continue to grow and eventually hit its peak during the 18th and 19th century. The development of the first steam-powered whaling ship in 1863 and gun-loaded harpoons in 1868 contributed to the industry's success. The industry eventually declined in the 19th century after the invention of kerosene. In 1971, the US banned whaling after declaring eight whales species endangered. Additionally, the International Whale Commission, or IWC, was founded in 1946 in order to prevent the overhunting of whales. Their efforts have been effective and certain whale species have recovered. However, illegal whale hunting exists to this day and Norway and Japan still hunt whales.

Some countries continue to practice whaling. Shown is a Japanese whaling ship in Antarctica. 

When whaling was most commonly practiced, the endangerment of whales caused a lasting impact on the Earth's ecosystem. The steep decrease in the whale population led to an unstable food chain and a change in the eating habits of many species. For example, the decline in the whale population caused a predator of whales, orcas, to begin preying on other marine animals such as sea otters. As a result, the otter population declined. Sea otters are a keystone species meaning their disappearance would drastically change the ecosystem. When the sea otter species is affected, the sea urchin population increases. This leads to kelp forests being destroyed by the increasing number of sea urchins. Many species depend on kelp for food and habitat, so the destruction of these kelp forests has had a devastating effect on marine life. In biology class, we learned about the Green World Hypothesis and how predators and even more importantly, keystone species, are able to regulate ecosystems. Keystone species come in all shapes and sizes. Similar to otters, Pisaster ochraceus starfish are a keystone species. Their removal largely impacts other species in their habitat and harms the biodiversity of intertidal ecosystems. The change in population of an apex predator results in what is known as a trophic cascade. Trophic cascades happen when a decrease in the population of a predatory species causes the deregulation of resources and cascades of indirect effects on other species. The Green World Hypothesis and trophic cascades demonstrate how ecosystems are regulated from the top down. The decrease in whales which led orcas to hunting sea otters, caused the structure of the ecosystem to be altered and added a fourth level to the trophic cascade of their ecosystem. Learning about trophic cascades and examining the effects whaling has had on them, shows the interconnectedness and fragility of the structure of ecosystems. Humans tampering with one species such as whales, affects all life on Earth. 

Sea urchins taking over a kelp forest off the California coast.

Like most organisms, whales play an important role in our environment and allow for many other species to survive. In particular, whales help the ocean's ecosystem by helping to maintain stable populations of other marine species. Whales most directly impact krill populations. Blue whales can eat up to 40 million krill a day! Whale poop also benefits the environment. Whale poop is filled with nutrients and is eaten by phytoplankton and allows them to grow. Phytoplankton is able to take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into cellular energy. It also releases oxygen that is then taken in by many different organisms. Once the phytoplankton have absorbed carbon, the carbon is then stored and is not able to return to the atmosphere even once the plankton dies. In sum, whale poop contributes to the growth of phytoplankton which allows for many species to grow and reproduce. In fact, it is estimated that 400,000 tons of carbon is extracted from the atmosphere by whales each year!

Sperm whale discharging waste.

Aside from supplying food to phytoplankton, whales also directly lower the atmosphere's carbon dioxide levels. Whales are extremely large mammals that are able to store tons of carbon in their bodies. When whales die, their bodies sink to the sea floor and all of the carbon previously stored in the whales remain in the deep sea for centuries. In fact when whales die, on average each whale sequesters 33 tons of carbon dioxide that has been accumulated over their lifetime. However, after centuries of whaling, whale populations have not recovered. Unfortunately, this means whales are not capturing and sequestering as much carbon as they could have been, had we left their species unharmed. Believe it or not, scientists calculated that before the increase of industrial whaling, whale populations(excluding sperm whales) could sink as many as 1.9 million tons of carbon to the bottom of the ocean each year. Furthermore, when whaling is being practiced, whale carcasses are prevented from reaching the bottom of the ocean and upon their removal and processing, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. 

Two humpback whales.

Overall, helping toreverse the harmful effects of whaling and restoring whale populations would lead to an increase in both direct and indirect carbon sequestration. This would be key in combating climate change and decreasing the deadly amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year. Aiding the whale population is a risk free project that can help fight against climate change and improve the entire ecosystem and marine life. Incorporating the restoration of whale populations into the global fight against climate change is a necessary and very possible step for our planet.

The World Without Coral

The ocean is a fascinating part of our world home to thousands of different species each with its own structure and function. 

Coral reef

Before I go any further, let's get some things straight. Coral reefs are vast underwater structures made up of the skeletons of colonial marine invertebrates. Not to be mistaken for a plant, coral is actually an animal! It also happens to be a very important factor in our ecosystem. 

Coral reefs purify and clean the water in which they live, protect coastlines from the damaging effects of tropical storms and erosion, and provide a source of nitrogen and other vital elements for marine food chains. Also referred to as the "rainforests of the sea," coral reefs provide habitat and food for a quarter of all marine species. Coral reefs provide nourishment for around half a billion people. Coral reefs feed a variety of fish, which in turn feed people. The fish found on coral reefs are consumed by an estimated 500 million people worldwide. Clearly, they are very important!

What is harming coral reefs?

Coral reef ecosystems are unfortunately in great danger. Some dangers can be natural such as diseases, predators, and storms. Other threats however have been imposed by people. These include pollution, sedimentation, unsustainable fishing practices such as overfishing, and climate change, which is causing the ocean temperature to increase as well as causing ocean acidification. Many of these threats can cause coral bleaching, death, and physical damage to these fragile ecosystems. Corals are able to recover from bleaching events if conditions improve before they die. However, it can take many years for the ecosystems to fully recover. 

During the 2014-2017 coral bleaching event, unusually warm waters affected 70 percent of coral ecosystems worldwide. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, for example, was particularly hit hard with hundreds of miles of coral bleached. 

Australia's Great Barrier Reef

Why should we care?

Without corals, reefs would deteriorate and eventually disappear. If coral reefs disappeared, crucial food, shelter, and hatching grounds for fish and other marine organisms would cease to exist. As a consequence, biodiversity would greatly suffer. Not only would we have a less diverse and less beautiful ocean, but many people would also be faced with an economic disaster since tourism and fisheries directly depend on healthy coral reefs. 

Photo of a fire coral before and after experiencing severe bleaching in the 2016 mass bleaching event

What can you do?

Suppose you are wondering what you can do to help preserve the world's naturally beautiful coral reefs. In that case, you should know that chemicals in sunscreen can cause coral bleaching, harm coral DNA, and cause abnormal growth and deformities. You might be asking, "How does sunscreen cause coral bleaching?" Well, in most cases, zooxanthellae cover corals. These microscopic critters absorb light and convert it into nourishment for the coral through photosynthesis. Corals expel the zooxanthellae when they are stressed, such as by rising water temperatures or pollution from sunscreen chemicals. These small critters are a lifeline for the coral. Without them, corals lose the main food and oxygen source as well as the broad assortment of colors that make coral so appealing. The disease is more susceptible in bleached corals. Their development is impeded, and the resulting damage will negatively affect the aquatic life in that area. While some bleached corals may recover, most will die of starvation. 

There are many different ways you can protect coral reefs. This includes choosing sustainable seafood, picking up trash others have left behind, and volunteering. You can participate in beach or reef cleanups in your area. Using water sparingly is also helpful. The less you consume, the less runoff and wastewater will eventually end up in the ocean. Coral is a gift from nature that shouldn't be removed from the ocean and given as a gift to others. Leave corals on the reef since it takes decades or longer for them to build reef structures. If you're diving, don't touch anything. Coral reefs are still growing and stirred-up sediment can smother corals. In addition, use caution when boating. Anchor in sandy areas away from coral and sea grasses so that the anchor and chain do not drag on nearby corals. Also, check active chemicals in sunscreen and choose sunscreens with chemicals that aren't harmful to marine life. 

What are scientists doing?

Scientists are also experimenting with new approaches to assisting coral reef ecosystems, such as growing coral in a nursery and then transplanting it to damaged areas. As stated before, corals expel the tiny algae that live inside them as sea temperatures rise. This effectively starves the corals by turning them white. In response, researchers have developed a lab-grown strain of microalgae which is more tolerant to heat. When injected back into the coral, the algae can handle warmer water better. The researchers believe their findings may help in the effort to restore coral reefs, which they say are, "suffering mass mortalities from marine heatwaves". The researchers made the coral more tolerant to temperature-induced bleaching by bolstering the heat tolerance of its microalgal symbionts - tiny cells of algae that live inside the coral tissue. 

Image describing what coral bleaching is and how it is caused

The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the surface of our planet. It's hard to imagine, but about 97 percent of the Earth's water can be found in our ocean. Those statistics are overwhelming but also fascinating. For something that takes up that much space on our planet, it must be important. Right? And if it's important, we should want to keep it clean... right? I have always loved the ocean. There's just something about it where I have always felt connected. Being in the water makes me feel calm and at peace.  My dad takes my sister and I snorkeling and its there when we go out and see the coral reefs. It's amazing to see all the other forms of life that exist under the sea. It sparks an interest in me, leaving me with the feeling of wanting to explore more. We never fail to come back less than outstanded by the buety of whats out there under the water. I chose this topic because it was something I already had knowledge on but also wanted to learn more and educate others. I am very passionate about keeping our ocean clean and the first step is bringing awareness to others.

Life Without the Sun: Hydrothermal Vent Communities

We have learned a great deal of information about life and its versatility from the oceans, including possible insights into how life started or how it could exist on other planets. Multiple moons in our solar system such as Enceladus and Europa, contain oceans just like ours that are covered in ice. Hydrothermal vents prove that life can exist in places with no sunlight. To me, this fact is fascinating.

In the deepest parts of the ocean, life is quite sparse. There is no sunlight below 1000 meters, temperatures are near freezing, and the pressure is extreme. However, in certain select regions where tectonic plates are separating, there exist regions where the density of life is 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than the surrounding ocean floor. These biological hotspots are centered around hydrothermal vents, or underwater geysers, and the communities of organisms that they host are not dependent on the sun.

Hydrothermal vent: source

Hydrothermal vents were first discovered in 1977 in an area very familiar to evolutionary study, the Galapagos Ridge. To the shock of scientists, hydrothermal vents were found to be teaming with life. Because hydrothermal vents expel toxic minerals like hydrogen sulfide, which is dangerous to most organisms, it was predicted that life could not exist there. Through further research, it was discovered that bacteria were converting those toxic minerals into energy through a process called chemosynthesis.

Chemosynthetic bacteria: source

Chemosynthesis serves the same role that photosynthesis plays in that it produces energy for the community. In the chemical reaction, the bacteria oxidize hydrogen sulfide and adds carbon dioxide and oxygen to produce sugar and waste products like sulfur. Some waste products are consumed by other organisms and some are toxic. Archaea also perform chemosynthesis around hydrothermal vents through processes like methanogenesis, which uses energy from hydrogen and releases methane. Chemical processes like these allow hydrothermal vent communities to be almost completely independent of the sun.

Tubeworms, crabs, muscles, barnacles, and swarms of shrimp at the Juan de Fuca Ridge: source

Chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea act as the primary producers and form what is known as biofilm, a layer of slime and bacteria that helps other organisms stick to surfaces. These sheets of bacteria and slime are then consumed by grazing shrimp and limpets. The small grazing organisms that consume the bacteria are consumed by larger organisms like tubeworms, crabs, and fish. Chemosynthetic bacteria are also used in a multitude of symbiotic relationships. Species like tubeworms contain colonies of chemosynthetic bacteria that detoxify the tubeworm's blood and use the toxins to create energy for the worm and the bacteria.

Artistic description of harsh surface conditions during the Archean eon: source

Hydrothermal vents are thought by some to be the origin of life. The surface of the early Earth was extremely hot, radiated, volcanic, and under bombardment from meteorites. With this in mind and the fact that the earliest living organisms lived in the oceans, it is understood that organic molecules were first synthesized in the ocean or Earth's crust. It is also known that early life used chemosynthetic processes for energy. This makes hydrothermal vents a possible starting point for life on Earth. In Günter Wächtershäuser's Metabolism First theory, he theorizes that life began with small metabolic processes that lead to replication. He theorized that hydrothermal vents, containing elements like carbon dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, and iron-sulfur compounds like pyrrhotite and pyrite reacted and lead to self replicating chemical processes.

Hydrothermal vents are created during volcanic activity, and just as easily as they can be created, they can suddenly stop flowing. This leads to a slow death for the community around the vents and a dispersal of its organisms in search of a new vent. Exploration of hydrothermal vents is incredibly expensive and difficult, so much is still unknown about these fascinating biological oases in the deep ocean. 

To me, hydrothermal vent communities are fascinating just because of how alien they appear. Preposterous organisms like tubeworms, Pompeii worms, and yeti crabs all look like they come from another planet. When you take into account that the hydrothermal vent acts like a small sun and life down there is independent of the greater food web, it isn't crazy to call them alien.

Tunicates: What are they and why are they Important?

The ocean is filled with millions of different species, with many that have yet to even be discovered or studied. Even some more common creatures are not well known, and I find these understudied animals fascinating.

You may have never heard of a tunicate before now, and you may believe that they are of little importance. The reality, however, is that Tunicates (more commonly known as sea squirts) are extremely important to the human society, even being studied to find a possible cure for cancer. 

What is a Tunicate?

A tunicate is a marine animal (thought they may look like a plant!) that most commonly lives in colonies of other individuals of its species. They live in shallow waters, and there are around 3,000 different species, each one of them unique. It spends the majority of its life sessile, attached to rocks, coral, sunken ships, or other surfaces. They are invertebrates, but scientists have actually found that they are our closest invertebrate relatives, sharing many traits with vertebrates themselves. 

painted tunicate

Tunicates look like a barrel, enveloped in a firm, protective structure called a “tunic,” which is where they get their name from. They are filter feeders, having two siphons that are used to filter in plankton and water from one siphon and expel the excess water from the other. They get their more common name, Sea Squirt, from the fact that when they are taken out of the water, their main defense mechanism is to squirt water at whoever or whatever took them away from their home.

cluster of tunicates

Life cycle and Anatomy

Despite their odd appearance as an adult, a Tunicate larvae looks much more like a tadpole. At this stage, the tunicate seems much more like an animal because it has mobility. It has a notochord structure in its tail, which acts similarly to the spine of vertebrates. Along its back, it has a nerve cord . In their head-shaped structure, they have a cerebral vesicle that acts as a brain, which has an eyespot to detect light and an otolith, which orients the larva to the current flow of gravity. 

tunicate larvae anatomy

However, the Tunicate does not spend much time as a larva. It does not have a mouth at this stage of its life, so it quickly finds a surface to attach itself to. Then, they proceed to digest their own brain structure, eye sensors, spinal structure, and tail! What is left behind is the adult body of the Tunicate surrounded by the Tunic.

tunicate changing from a larvae to an adult tunicate

The anatomy of the adult tunicate is more simple. Within the tunic, the animal consists of a simple digestive system: an inhalant siphon (used to take in food and water), and exhalant siphon (used to expel waste and excess water). The tunic is secreted by the epidermis, which is on the inside of the tunic. The inside of the epidermis has a thicker dermis and a ring of muscle which allows the tunicate to squeeze itself to expel water.

Inside that structure, the tunicate is comprised mostly of an atrium, which is a large cavity, and a large pharynx with pores that allow water to pass through. The pharynx is connected to the digestive system at one end and the inhalant siphon on the other end.

tunicate anatomy

Although they do not have many predators, they are normally eaten by sharks and skates. Many tunicates also have toxic skin to ward off any potential threats.

Reproduction

Nearly all Tunicates are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs. Self-fertilization is possible, but it is avoided, because sexual reproduction allows for more variability in individuals, increasing survivability. Since tunicates live in groups or clusters, eggs are retained within the body while sperm is released into the surrounding water, falling onto the neighboring tunicates and beginning the fertilization process. The eggs are incubated inside the body until they hatch.

Tunicate reproductive cycles 

Abilities of the Tunicate

The most incredible thing about the tunicate is its regenerative ability. For example, its inhalant siphon: when it is damaged or amputated, the tunicate is able to regenerate the siphon without the use of cell division. Instead, it is rebuilt through direct differentiation of sac stem cells, or through the migration of cells created by the sac stem cells. As the tunicate ages, however, its regenerative properties decrease and eventually completely stop working.

regeneration in tunicates

Why are they important?

The reason the tunicate is so important to society is due to two things: the fact that they are our closest invertebrate ancestor and their incredible regenerative ability. These two factors have given scientists reason to believe that tunicates may be a key to finding a cure to cancer. Though there has been little success so far, understanding how tunicates are able to regenerate themselves without the need to create new cells is the first step in searching for a way to make this effect possible in humans. Since they are our closest invertebrate relatives, scientists believe that it may be possible to somehow find a link to how this regeneration occurs, and may be able to discover a way to replicate this process. Cancer cells cause exceptional cellular loss and cause mutated replication, so a sort of regeneration that has no need for cellular replication is especially interesting. Who knew that such a simple looking creature could be so vital to study?

just another cool picture of some tunicates

Breaking News: SpongeBob Has A Cure to Cancer! (The Importance of Sea Sponges In Our World)

Well, not necessarily. Though SpongeBob is an iconic fictional character who has brightened the mornings of children for many years, he is not the hero of this story. While scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, I came across posts discussing this hero of ours, and it brought me great joy and optimism for the future in cancer research as my own aunt is a cancer survivor. This hero is a very different sea sponge, one that goes by the name of Fascaplysinopsis reticulata. Recently, scientists at Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) in Russia have tested and experimented on this sponge, which led to the isolation and chemical synthesis of the compound 3,10-dibromofascaplysin.

Image of the sponge, Fascaplysinopsis reticulata, which scientists experimented on at FEFU. Source

Now, you may be wondering: why is this compound so important? Well, I'll tell you! In the experiments conducted by the researchers, they tested the newly synthesized compound on prostate cancer cells, including cells that were resistant to chemotherapy, a widely used form of cancer treatment. They discovered that the compound was able induce a programmed cell death mechanism in these cells, otherwise known as apoptosis, which is the most favorable action for anticancer drugs. Additionally, they found that the 3,10-dibromofascaplysin worked extremely well in combination with other anti-tumor drugs.

Image of chemical synthesized from sponge at FEFU, 3,10-dibromofascaplysin. Source

Awesome, right? Well, mostly. The researchers also discovered that the compound, though it kills the cells, activates an enzyme, specifically a kinase, which protects the tumor cell. You may be asking yourself, is this good or bad? Really, it's neither. This just informs the researchers that the compound should be utilized with inhibitors to the kinase so that it works efficiently.

Additionally, scientists have hopes for the future with 3,10-dibromofascaplysin. As of right now, the compound is highly toxic to healthy cells in the human body, so even though it may be helping with the treatment to cancer, it is doing damage to other cells at the same time, making the compound have limited use as a solution. Scientists are currently working on modifying the structure of the compound in order to lower its toxicity levels while also allowing it to maintain its cancer-battling abilities. This would allow patients to have affective targeted therapy with the newly synthesized compound. With this discovery, there is much to look forward to in the battle to fight cancer.

It's crazy to think that something so important and beneficial to us humans was found in a sea sponge, but this isn't the first time this has happened. Since the 1950s, scientists have studied the sea sponge Tectitethya crypta. They were able to extract two chemicals that were utilized in the first ever anti-leukemia drug and these same chemicals were also utilized in a drug called azidothymidine which was used to treat patients with HIV. 

The sponge Tectitethya crypta used to derive chemicals for modern drugs. Source

 

With our oceans still mostly undiscovered, scientists will continue to search for novel marine chemicals that can assist us with our modern technology in treating or curing current human diseases and illnesses. However, as time goes, the detrimental impact of climate change is growing and growing and it is affecting these marine ecosystems, especially the sea sponges. Warming temperatures of oceans like the Mediterranean and the Caribbean have led to many sponges dying. On top of that, human interference, such as fishing and dredging, has led to the deaths of sponges. Even the effects of pollution has led to the introduction of new bacteria, killing the sponges. Not only are they important to us for scientific purposes, they also are essential bases in their own ecosystems. They serve as a home and also as a source of food for many animals. If they were to be removed from their ecosystems, this would create a domino effect which could lead to decreases in fish population, which is also something that we humans rely on as a source of food.

Sponges play an important role in our marine ecosystems. Source

Clearly, sea sponges play an important role on our planet, whether it be helping us improve our medicinal techniques to save more lives, or just maintaining balance in the various ecosystems across the ocean; they help us in more ways than we could imagine. However, we must now ask ourselves how far will we go to protect this creature that can help determine our future. Maybe later on, they can make us Crabby Patties! ;)

  

Source

Life at 5,000 Feet Under: The Case of the Dragonfish

Up to 5,000 feet below the surface, a tube-shaped creature with a huge jaw and a projection hanging from its chin swims through the ocean. This is a dragonfish (aka stomiidae aka the sea moth) -  one from a family of animals that live in the deep sea. When I first saw one of these on the Australian Museum website (Australia and its surrounding waters are a haven for weird creatures) I thought it looked like a CGI alien or something out of a fantasy novel - more of a dragon than a fish. When I started to consider, though, how different their dark ocean world is from ours, a place where few humans have ever been, their unusual adaptations began to make sense. 

Idiacanthus atlanticus black dragonfish

First: the jaws. Dragonfish are the only type of creature in the deep sea that can unhinge their mouth bones to ingest prey even bigger than their heads! Most dragonfish can open their mouths like a broken pair of scissors, flexing a joint between their skull and spine so that they can eat other fish headfirst. In the picture below, you can see a lanternfish chilling in a dragonfish’s belly - swallowed whole from the cranial hinge.**

dragonfish x-ray

If the gaping jaws weren’t enough to scare you off, don’t worry. Dragonfish also have multiple rows of razor-sharp invisible teeth! These small creatures spend most of their time lurking in the depths of the ocean with their jaws open, waiting for other organisms to come along and get chomped. To make sure they go undetected, the dragonfish have developed fangs that are completely transparent due to tiny crystals made of hydroxyapatite in their enamel. These teeth are so durable that some researchers are using them as inspiration for new types of glass and ceramics. Their fangs are stronger than a piranha’s and have about the thickness of a needle, arranged in rows to catch and gobble up prey.

Another thing you might notice when staring at the dragonfish is the little goatee hanging off its chin. This is known as a barbel, which has a bioluminescent organ at the end that can act like a lantern for the fish. Dragonfish often use these barbels like fishing lines to attract prey. Many unsuspecting lanternfish latch onto the orbs, thinking it's a piece of food, but instead they get snapped up and swallowed by the dragon. 

Each dragonfish species has barbels of different lengths and patterns unique to their type. It’s been theorized that the barbel orbs could also be mating signals - a light the animal turns on to let other dragonfish know they are open for mating. These creatures live at such great depths, though, that little research has yet to be done on this front.

The last feature of the dragonfish that made me question how we live on the same planet as them is the way that they emit light. Most bioluminescent creatures (which are common in the deep ocean where the sun’s rays can’t reach) give off an eerie blue glow. The stoplight loosejaw - a species of dragonfish named for its red light and loose jaw - is different. These are one of the only fishes in the world that bioluminesce the color red. At the depths where dragonfish live, the wavelengths of red light are too long to reach and nearly all creatures can’t detect the color. In fact, it’s been determined that the loosejaws don’t use their red barbel orbs as bait, but rather to illuminate their prey while going undetected by other creatures. This red invisibility cloak is produced by a photophore (the bioluminescent organ referenced earlier), a pigmented sac with a shiny inner lining and a mass of gland cells where light is reflected out through an aperture. These pigments come from a bunch of bacteria that the loosejaw eats that allow it to both detect and produce that odd red light.

photophore structure

Even though the dragonfish seems so different from us, some 400 million years ago a creature from which we've both descended swam in the oceans. The case of the dragonfish is one where form follows both function and evolutionary pressure. In this unique world without light sources, with heavy pressure, and few means of finding food at 5,000 feet under, a creature as bizarre as the dragonfish can survive and even flourish.

**Extra fact: Dragonfish have pitch-black stomach walls so that their bioluminescent food can’t be seen from the outside. This adaptation keeps the dragonfish safe from its predators, making sure all lights are out when it has to go undetected in the deep ocean.

Immortality is real!

The idea of immortality is absurd, and as part of our world, we humans have accepted that every living organism has one thing in common: they will eventually die. As a result, many myths and legends revolving around our mortality have become pretty common. To name one, the fountain of youth.  But what if I told you nature has granted some of her creatures with the ability to survive for centuries if not indefinitely. To clarify I should say that scientists like Thomas Bosch consider the word immortality stupid because it implies that you can't die when that's not the case. These creatures are not gods and are susceptible to disease, predators, or drastic changes in their environment but unlike humans and many other species, they don't die from old age. To begin talking about dying from old age we should tackle it in palpable terms. In humans, grandpa and grandma are not going to live forever, sorry. They are getting older and older and as such, their bodily systems are getting weaker, specifically, their ability to fight illnesses and they are more likely to suffer from health complications.  Because of this reason, diseases and long term health issues hit the elderly much harder than a 21-year-old. 

But these creatures that possess immortality don't seem to age in the sense that it doesn't affect their means of survival as a factor on its own.

Turritopsis dohrii medusa

The pinky sized jellyfish deemed the "immortal jellyfish" (Turritopsis dohrnii) has no average lifespan because of its unique ability to age backward. The jellyfish is brought into the world and chances are it will die to a predator or something that it injures it beyond repair. But in cases of lesser physical damage and starvation it can, "Benjamin Button" itself. It turns its pre-existing cells into younger versions of themselves. How? It turns itself into a blob-like cyst that mimics the early stage of its life called the polyp stage. In the process, it changes all of its cells. It can go from muscle cells to nerve cells to even sex cells. Only in this stage, it can asexually reproduce and buds off into other polyps that are near genetically identical copies of the original. THIS IS AMAZING. Typically jellyfish follow a standard cycle of reproduction that follows something like the image below.

Throughout their lifecycle, jellyfish take on two different body forms: medusa and polyps. Polyps can reproduce asexually by budding, while medusae spawn eggs and sperm to reproduce sexually. 

The Turritopsis dohrnii can altogether skip an extremely complicated and delicate process of reproduction and just age backward to survive INFINITE TIMES. Granted, it does this in emergency situations but this creature has no average life span because of this amazing mechanism. Let's look at something more stoic: bristlecone pines. This BBC article describes a study in which multiple tissue samples from pollen and seeds from different age gaps spanning up to 4700 years were measured.  The result? The vascular tissue functioned exactly the same as it did in the youthful samples. Unlike jellyfish, the reason for this longevity is not as well explored but Thomas Bosch says it, "probably comes down to a special property of the trees' meristems" Meristems are areas of roots and shoots that possess a large number of stem cells.

Bristlecone Pines can live for thousands of years(Credit: Jack Dykinga/NPL)

The idea that these creatures could survive indefinitely with no interference from predation or other factors and a little bit of luck is amazing and goes to show that we could stand to learn something from nature's fountains of youth. Some of these creatures are being studied and applications to medicine are being used to keep us healthy for a long time. Look like there's some hope for grandpa and grandma.

To see more creatures

To read more about jellyfish

Good Grief! Not the Coral Reef!

Tropical Coral Reef 

The tropical coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystems on the planet due to the vast amount of animals that live in the coral and are protected by them. Unfortunately, the coral reefs are dying at an unsettling rate, and this is because of the stresses that the corals face because of the water that surrounds them.

The Affect of Coral Bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef 

Coral bleaching is a process that corals go through when they are stressed by a significant environmental change, like the change in sea temperature. What happens to the coral is the symbiotic algae that live in the tissue of the coral is expelled, causing the coral to turn white. The algae and the coral have a mutualistic relationship with each other. The coral provides a protected environment and components for the algae, to undergo photosynthesis, while the algae provides the nutrients that the coral needs to stay alive. When the coral does not have the algae in its tissue, it lacks the nutrients that it needs, and cannot survive.

Climate change is one of the leading factors that contribute to the death of coral reefs. Two reasons why climate change is killing the coral are the effect of changing sea temperatures and ocean acidification. Ocean acidification occurs when excess CO2 in the atmosphere dissolves into the oceans, which makes the water more acidic. Where does this excess CO2 in the atmosphere come from? Humans, of course! By burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over time and has vastly affected our ecosystems. When bleaching occurs, it can happen on an enormous scale. In 2016, there was a "mass bleaching event" in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia because of climate change.

 The effect of the death of corals reefs do not only affect the lives of species in the ocean, but they also affect the economies of the places around them. The coral reefs are home to about 9,000 species of marine life, which means that the food webs in the ocean are profoundly affected. The ripple effects from the smallest plankton to the most massive whale shark. In Australia, the death of the coral reef is detrimental to their economy. Because the reef supports the fisheries, which contributes 6.4 billion to the Australian economy and also employs more than 64,000 people. If the coral reefs die, then the animals will die. Fewer animals mean that there will be less money going to the Australian economy, causing people to lose their jobs. Developing countries are also negatively affected by the death of the reefs. Not only are they affected by the lack of fish close to the reefs, but they are also affected by the lack of tourists. Because the beautiful reefs attract tourists to these countries, they are losing money because nobody wants to see dead coral reefs.

Now, you may be asking, What can I do to protect coral? Well, you can start by recycling and disposing of your trash correctly, especially on the beach. Another way that you can protect our coral is to reduce your use of fertilizers in your gardens because when it rains the fertilizers run into the waterways that end up in the ocean, polluting the water and harming the coral reefs. If you decide to take a trip and visit the coral, please avoid touching the reefs, because any contact with the coral reef could damage the corals and the animals that live within them. 

A scuba diver at the coral reef in the Caribbean 

All of these atrocities are due to climate change and how humans are hurting our environment because of the hurtful fossil fuels that we are putting into our atmosphere. Not only does the death of coral affect the lives of species in the ocean, but it also affects the lives of humans and countries that depend on the coral for the stability of their economies. So the next time you take a look at the beautiful corals, think about what you can do to help preserve not only their beauty but the lives that they impact.