When we look at the seafloor, we might not see the bottom-dwelling sharks that blend in with the rocks and the sand. But to other sharks of the same species, they stand out like green glow sticks. Via InsideScience.
-- When we look at the seafloor, we might not see the bottom-dwelling sharks that blend in with the rocks and the sand. But to other sharks of the same species, they stand out like green glow sticks.In 2014, David Gruber, a marine biologist from the City University of New York, and his team discovered that two species of bottom-dwelling sharks are biofluorescent.
Gruber had previously discovered that swell sharks and chain catsharks have special vision that allows them to see other glowing sharks. For the new study, published today in the journal iScience, he teamed up with Jason Crawford, a chemical biologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, to understand the chemistry behind these creatures’ amazing ability to transform the blue light that reaches the seafloor.
"We didn't really know what to expect going into it," Crawford said."We were delighted to find small molecules as being responsible." In the light skin, a molecule called bromo-tryptophan breaks down into the five newly identified green-glowing molecules. However, in the dark skin, two bromo-tryptophan molecules come together to form a new molecule that has antimicrobial properties, the team showed.
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