Chambered nautilus: the ocean’s jet-propelled diver
To avoid predators by day, nautilus linger along deep reef slopes as deep as 2,000 feet. At night, they migrate to shallower waters and cruise the reefs, trailing their tentacles in search of food.
Its simple eyes can only sense dark and light, but the nautilus uses more than 90 tentacles—the most of any cephalopod—to touch and taste the world. A nautilus’s tentacles, unlike those of other cephalopods, have grooves and ridges that grip food and pass it to the nautilus’s mouth. A parrotlike beak rips the food apart, and a radula further shreds the food.
Watch:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBCsF8hQK1M
Know more:
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animal-guide/octopus-and-kin/chambered-nautilus
#biodiversity #marinelife
A real living fossil - believe it also has greenish blood, because it uses copper as its base rather than iron.
ReplyDeleteYup, Chambered Nautilus has a copper based blood protein called hemocyanin to transport oxygen compared to human's have an iron based hemoglobin - but the interesting thing is hemocyanin seems to have an anti-cancer and anti-tumor effect on some species via "through both apoptic and nonapoptic mechanisms of cell death" Corina Marinescu see below.
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The hemocyanin found in Concholepas concholepas blood has immunotherapeutic effects against bladder cancer in murine models. Researchers in 2006 primed mice with C. concholepas before implantation of bladder tumor (MBT-2) cells. Mice treated with C. concholepashemocyanin showed antitumor effects: prolonged survival, decreased tumor growth and incidence, and lack of toxic effects and may have a potential use in future immunotherapy for superficial bladder cancer.[15]
Keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH) is a known immune stimulant derived from circulating glycoproteins of the marine mollusk Megathura crenulata. KLH has been shown to be a significant treatment against the proliferations of breast cancer, pancreas cancer, and prostate cancer cells when delivered in vitro. The 2003 research study "Keyhole limpet hemocyanin, a novel immune stimulant with promising anticancer activity in Barrett’s esophageal adenocarcinoma" shows that keyhole limpet hemocyanin is also effective in the inhibition of growth of human Barrett’s esophageal cancer through both apoptic and nonapoptic mechanisms of cell death. This research is promising for future cancer curative research. [16]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemocyanin
Corina Marinescu , I recall you "turned me on to" apoptosis - and it looks like (human) biology handles apoptosis much better than necrosis (via phagocytosis). So I wonder, is necrosis the mechanism of cell death for chemotherapy ?
ReplyDeleteIf so then (surprisingly) Nautilus blood treatments might theoretically be considered less damaging / more therapeutic than chemotherapy for cancer treatment ?
This is "just" my reasoning with the definitions on Wikipedia and so could possibly be a logical but spurious conclusion. But Barbara Starr isn't it cool how much solid information is out there in the knowledge graph just waiting to be mined, reasoned with, explored, and tested out these days ?
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Apoptotic processes have been implicated in a wide variety of diseases. Excessive apoptosis causes atrophy, whereas an insufficient amount results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, such as cancer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis
Marc Cox -- there's some evidence that cancerous cells suppress apoptosis in order to grow faster (or more specifically, since low oxygen environments stimulate apoptosis, cancer cells that are growing so fast they deplete oxygen supplies would die unless they suppress apoptosis.) So there's a sort of chicken-and-egg issue in defining the role of apoptosis in oncogenesis.
ReplyDeleteSeems identifying cancer cells then removing their telomeres would precipitate their apoptosis.
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Telomeres and cancer :
Telomerase, the enzyme complex responsible for elongating telomeres, is activated in approximately 90% of tumors ( WOAH WOAH 90% ! ). However, a sizeable fraction of cancerous cells employ alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT), a non-conservative telomere lengthening pathway involving the transfer of telomere tandem repeats between sister-chromatids. ( clever cell survival technique with sinister results )
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As a cell begins to become cancerous, it divides more often and its telomeres become very short. If its telomeres get too short, the cell may die.
It can escape this fate by becoming a cancer cell and activating an enzyme called telomerase, which prevents the telomeres from getting even shorter.
Studies have found shortened telomeres in many cancers, including pancreatic, bone, prostate, bladder, lung, kidney, and head and neck.
Measuring telomerase may be a new way to detect cancer. If scientists can learn how to stop telomerase, they might be able to fight cancer by making cancer cells age and die.
In one experiment, researchers blocked telomerase activity in human breast and prostate cancer cells growing in the laboratory, prompting the tumor cells to die. But there are risks.
http://www.news-medical.net/health/Telomeres-and-Cancer.aspx
Huh, that's sort of unexpected -- at least to me. I'm going to have to catch up on telomerase research. I thought that it was essential for cell replication of any sort, and cancer was suppressing it. Been waaay too long since biochem, obviously.
ReplyDeleteWhat is amazing is that Nautiluses first appeared about 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period
ReplyDeleteA true Vulcan.
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