Wow of the Week: Animals that have inspired amazing medical science

Move over, guinea pigs… There’s a menagerie of fauna that has helped researchers gain some novel […]

Move over, guinea pigs… There’s a menagerie of fauna that has helped researchers gain some novel insight into treating human disease. Here are just a few of these amazing animals:

Jellyfish

The glow of these brainless beauties has been found to help with tumor imaging – the bioluminescence of jellyfish tentacles has inspired technology that can detect cancer, microbes and viruses, according to science. Using a green fluorescent protein called GFP that’s found in crystal jellyfish, proteins associated with cancer and other diseases can be tagged and tracked in small animals.

Naked mole rats

This living, breathing sack of pink and wrinkly flesh was actually nominated this year by Science Magazine as Vertebrate of the Year. That’s because naked mole rats are being studied for their longevity – they tend to live about 30 years, whereas their fuzzy counterparts live only a handful of years. And they are able to resist one of humanity’s worst blights – cancer. Our friends at the Foundation for Biomedical Research put it nicely:

Blind mole rats have adapted well to their underground low oxygen life-style well, remarkably well. So well in fact that the adaptation may be a clue to their resistance to cancer. An important player in cell shutdown defence is a protein called P53, this protein is mutated in blind mole rats as part of their ability to live in a low oxygen environment underground. Normal animals exposed to low oxygen mimicking the mole rat’s living quarters would send P53 into overdrive. In mole rats the trade off is a weakened P53 and bolster of the immune system that cancer cannot deal with, a real one, two punch.

Pomphorhynchus laevis

This spiny-headed parasitic worm punctures its hosts’ intestines with a bunch of microneedles on its proboscis. It then inflates its head so it’s stuck faster than Velcro. In a cool application of biomimicry this has inspired a skin graft, developed by researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which could potentially help treat Crohn’s disease.

“The unique design allows the needles to stick to soft tissues with minimal damage to the tissues,” Dr. Jeffrey Karp, the study’s senior author, said in a prepared statement. “Moreover, when it comes time to remove the adhesive, compared to staples, there is less trauma inflicted to the tissue, blood and nerves, as well as a reduced risk of infection.”

Vampire bats

I’m going to suck your blood… but don’t freak out, I’m gonna treat that stroke you’re having. A protein found in vampire bat saliva that helps it break down the blood it sucks is being studied for its use in breaking down the blood clots that cause strokes.

Spiders

In a throwback to last week’s Wow, the web-spinning of our eight-legged friends has been analyzed when they’re high as a kite. Researchers have studied the impact on web design when spiders are given drugs like caffeine, LSD, speed and a number of other drugs. The results are pretty cool – you can see how erratic caffeine makes the creatures, whereas marijuana and sleeping pills definitely mellow them out. There hasn’t been a solid application found for this sort of reaction among spiders, but it’s definitely fodder for thought.

Some other cool listicles:

The A-Z of Animals

10 Weird Animals You Couldn’t Live Without

7 Cool Animal-Inspired Technologies

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