“What I like to say is that the snails produce sort of a cluster bomb. Inside of each venom, you have between fifty to two hundred peptides, and all of those peptides target something major along the nervous system. One thing that they hit is a pain signal. When they silence the pain signal, the prey doesn’t go into fight or flight mode.”
So the fish stays calmer than it normally would, even as it is being eaten! Mande Holford says chemists have already had one major success using the snail’s peptides. It is a drug called Prialt. It eases pain for people with cancer and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
“On your neurons, you have these ‘gates’ that allow things to pass back and forth. The gate that controls chronic pain, they found a way to shut it down using one of the peptides.”
At first, Mande Holford may have wanted to study snails because of their beauty. But she is part of a larger movement toward marine, or undersea, research.
David Newman directs the Natural Products Branch of America’s National Cancer Institute.
“We’ve found some absolutely fascinating chemistry.”
After years of collecting organisms on land, Mr. Newman’s team now collects only sea creatures such as sponges or corals. He says that because these creatures cannot move, they use chemicals to fight.
“I have been known to say that weapons of mass destruction are alive and well on a coral reef, if you happen to be a fellow sponge who’s trying to encroach or you’re a starfish that’s trying to eat the sponge. These are extremely toxic agents because of the dilution effect of seawater.”
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25