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Sea Sponges Master Nano-technology
Mick Ohrberg writes "It has been discovered that sea sponges utilizes a biomolecular mechanism to direct nanofabrication of silica to create microscopic glass fibers. It's a protein that acts as a catalyst for the formation of glass from the biomineral. What's it all lead to? Hopefully a way to achieve nanostructural fabrication at low temperatures, instead of in vacuum and at high temperatures as with current technologies."
For a beautiful image of glassy needles of silica made by a marine sponge, visit this page about Daniel E. Morse biomolecular research. This is the second one from the top of the page. But don't miss this other page about his current research projects.
There are a lot of biomineralization processes out there at the microscopic level.
Chitons (a sea creature that looks like the ancient Trilobytes and/or women's shavers from the 70s) have iron-plated teeth: they have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that lay down magnetite crystals very precisely.
Actually, magnetite's a big one for micoscopic biomineralization. Lots of animals have it in their brains, and use it for navigation.
For more information on cool biomineralization, do a google search on Heinz Lowenstam's groundbreaking work, or research done by Steve Weiner, and Joe Kirschvink (this list is nothing like an exhaustive one: they just happen to be three people I knew/know who research the subject).
There's some amazing stuff out there. Even many species of rat have iron crystals strengthening the surface of their teeth.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Many sea sponges are little toxic waste factories. Since they can't move, they use chemical warfare to defend their territory and claim new territory. Nature behaves more like us than we might like to believe.
More than a few organisms use silica to create microscopic structual elements. These include horsetails (Equisetum), the stinging tree of Queensland and diatoms.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
All the more reason to participage in the Folding @ Home project. This project is helping researchers understand and develop models of protein folding, so that someday, sythetic enzymes that create useful products may be a reality.
Um, not only was this a Slashdot story a couple months ago (not that this is anything new) this is really old news. I saw Dan Morse give a talk about 5 years ago about the details of what's described above. Seriously - the silicateins were ID'd and characterized about 6-7 years ago and by the time I saw him talk, they were already generating new peptides designed from scratch.
Coming from a research group that's done similar work to the Morse group in the past, this is cool but rather old work.
The silica fibers generated by sponges are high quality but probably useless for standard telcom use since they contain relatively high levels of water which strongly absorbs in the bands that telecoms transmit at. However, the layered structure that these fibers have tend to have much better fracture resistance than pure silica fibers which might make them useful in things like box-to-box connectors for in-home use where the cables going to get stepped on or hit with some regularity.
From a scientific viewpoint the edge of catastrophe could be that steep. For example, in nuclear physics there's something known as a critical mass. Once you have a critical mass of fissionable material you can have a runaway reaction on your hands. Same thing with the environment. Tip the scales too much in the wrong direction, and they may very well never stop tipping.