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Highly-Conductive Shark Jelly Could Inspire New Tech (gizmag.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from UC Santa Cruz, the University of Washington, and the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason found shark jelly to have the highest proton conductivity ever seen in a biological material. The jelly's conductivity begins to approach that of leading proton-conducting polymers. Tiny organs in the skin of sharks, skates and rays, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, are key to the ability. Scientists believe that the jelly is what has been able to allow these animals to detect weak electric fields produced by their prey, as the organs, which are visible as pores in the skin, are connected to electrosensory cells via long, jelly-filled canals. Marco Rolandi, a co-author on a paper detailing the findings in Science Advances, sees potential use for the "shark jelly" in the development of new or enhanced materials or even the creation of new sensor technology. "The observation of high proton conductivity in the jelly is very exciting," Rolandi said. "We hope that our findings may contribute to future studies of the electrosensing function of the ampullae of Lorenzini and the organ overall, which is itself rather exceptional."
Seems like that might be useful for having sharks with fricken laser beams attached to their heads.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Because sharks don't have enough problems by getting turned into shark-fin soup in alarming numbers.
Embed chemoluminescent elements into the jelly and attach full and semitransparent mirrors at both ends to make a resonance chamber. Then you will have a shark laser.
Or at least improvements in meat-flavoured toast spreads.
Monkeywrench Ex Machina.
No, proton conductivity. H2 is just two protons and two electrons, in many biological processes it gets split into two H+ "ions" which happens to be: two protons. E.g. photosynthesis.
IIRC H2 dissolves in water building H+ and H3O- ions. So that jelly has an easy proton source available.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The mom sitting at the kitchen table having just spread peanut butter on a piece of bread. She is holding another piece of bread and the knife is full of glop just dipped from a jar that says
HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE SHARK JELLY
The kid is sitting across from her. He is staring, aghast. He looks just like all the other kids in Gary Larson kids, wide-eyed and terrified and kind of stupid. It is but another moment in time in the Far Side universe when something normal with a cruel horrifying twist is visited upon its helpless characters.
No one says anything in the cartoon. The moment is beyond words.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Posts like yours get modded down because of their hysterical tone and detachment from reality. No one said anything about killing endangered sharks for their jelly. They did, however, say something about the development of new materials. And bio research as well; as the article said, "We hope that our findings may contribute to future studies of the electrosensing function of the ampullae of Lorenzini and the organ overall, which is itself rather exceptional."
Sharks are pretty amazing. Did you also know they do not get cancer, and generally don't get sick at all?
Sharks (and camels weirdly enough) have an extremely efficient immune system. Instead of producing antibodies, which are around 150 kDa in size to fight disease like most other multi-cellular creatures, they produce a much more efficient molecule, a single-domain antibody, essentially the same thing but around 12 to 15 kDa in size. The smaller size provides less variance in the produced molecule to fight the disease which makes it far more specific to eliminating it. If someone were crazy enough to raise and bleed sharks, they'd make highly efficient biologic drug molecules or diagnostic biomarkers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-domain_antibody