When you think medicine, chances are that these come to mind rather than these.
What you might not realize is that a lot of times, potential drugs and other really useful
compounds come from some truly bizarre places in nature.
Today we’re looking at why these three unlikely animals might just save your life one day.
Welcome to the remote island of Komodo in Southeast Indonesia, home to the largest lizard
on Earth, the Komodo Dragon.
When hunting, these apex predators often rely on the 57 or more types of dangerous bacteria
residing in their saliva to kill their prey.
Even though their bacterial bite can take down animals as large as a buffalo, the dragons
themselves seem to be totally resistant to these deadly bacteria, which drew the attention
of scientists.
While studying this immune defense in the blood of dragons, they discovered a peptide
called VK25.
They predicted that it defended against infections from bacterial biofilms like the ones found
in other dragon’s deadly spit.
Biofilms are collections of microorganisms that stick together and coat a surface, making
a hard-to-remove slime.
When bacterial biofilms form in humans, they’re nearly impossible to treat.
The VK25 peptide was used as a model to help build a new synthetic peptide called DRGN-1.
In mice, this peptide was highly effective in treating common bacterial strains that
cause pneumonia and even staph infection.
But sometimes staph infections can get a bit out of hand, so out of hand in fact that we
may have no way to treat it.
A dangerous strain called MRSA (MUR-SUH - Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), is an infamous
superbug that kills upwards of 11,000 Americans each year.
MRSA creates a seemingly impenetrable biofilm that is highly resistant to antibiotics.
So are we in big trouble?
Maybe not if this humble sponge has anything to do with it!
Meet the Antarctic Sea Sponge Dendrilla Membrosa.
This little sub-zero loving porifera has recently been under the microscope for its incredible
resilience to bacterial infection.
The sponges are armed with a really promising compound called darwinolide.
When tested on strains of MRSA, this chemical had knockout-level antibacterial efficiency,
and has shown great promise as becoming one of the first ever antibiotics against biofilms.
Now, obviously it isn’t easy to send barges down to the antarctic and fish a bunch of
sponges to bring back to be used as medicine, so the icing on the cake here folks is that
a synthesis of this molecule is already under way in the lab
This of course isn’t all that oceanic life has to offer.
The 400 million year old horseshoe crab has been a workhorse in medicine for almost 50
years.
When you’re older than the dinosaurs, you better believe you’ll have some evolutionary
tricks up your sleeve, and in this case, look no further than their freaky blood.
Horseshoe crab blood gets its blue hue from the copper in hemocyanin, rather than our
hemoglobin-filled iron-red blood.
But what’s really fascinating is its highly effective immune defense against bacteria.
Cells in the blood known as amoebocytes release proteins that form a gel barrier around any
invading bacteria, which stops them in their tracks.
Starting in the late 1960s, scientists realized they could extract a fluid from the amoebocytes
that could form this gel.
There are two types of fluid collected from horseshoe crabs -- LAL from the Atlantic and
TAL from the pacific.
But we’ll focus on LAL.
Turns out LAL doesn’t have to be in a crab to work - anytime it sees the toxic molecules
hanging from bacteria like E. coli it clumps around them.
So LAL is used to check medicial instruments, medicines, or vaccines we inject into ourselves
for potentially harmful bacterial byproducts: squirt some LAL juice into a sample of flu
vaccine and if there’s no clumping, you’re clear to inject that batch into people.
These crabs are literally saving our lives.
For this reason, one quart of blood can run a bill of up to $15,000.
So as you might expect with liquid gold of this caliber, the LAL industry has exploded.
Half a million horseshoe crabs are bled each year at milking stations., These milked crabs
are later released, but studies suggest that of 8 - 10%the crabs die when returned.
This on top of overfishing and other environmental factors have made this species vulnerable
to extinction, which is bad news.
Because of this, chemists are trying to come up with synthetic versions of LAL or TAL so
we can leave our ancient friends alone!
There is a lesson in all of this folks, and it’s loud and clear.
We need to do everything we can to protect nature and to keep our planet healthy.
Saving the earth's ecosystems doesn't JUST mean saving all kinds of plants and animals.
Those exotic plants and animals might save your life, too -- and who knows what other
life saving compounds are out there.
So make sure to do your part!
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