One of the world's strangest and haunting exertion is nearing its close. For the time being, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs have been caught from the waters off the east coastline of the United States and bereaved of their costly blue blood.
This is a hyperrealistic practice, but for good reason. The Atlantic horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, has invaluable blood.
Unlike the blood of animals, horseshoe crabs don't apply hemoglobin to carry oxygen throughout their body. Instead, they use hemocyanin.
Hemocyanin is a chemical that gives blood a unique blue color. But, it is the type of immune cell that carries them that is highly valuable.
The horseshoe crabs existence will soon to extinct
Horseshoe crabs have been around the earth for 450 million years and have survived mass ruins and multiple ice eras, but because bright blue blood is fundamental for pharmaceutical companies, conservationists can snappily defunct brutes.
According to Dailymail, the blue blood contains inviolate cells called Limulus Polyphemus (LAL).
These immune cells are sensitive to poisonous bacteria and can be used to test vaccines and noxious bacterial poison medicines before these product goes on the market.
The coveted blood has been in use for nearly 20 years and is an important tool for testing the coronavirus vaccine presently on the market.
Most of these animals died after scientists drained horseshoe crab blood and returned it to the ocean, with South Carolina laboratories presuming horseshoe crabs are dehydrated for over to eight minutes.
Read more: Fossils of Ancient Horseshoe Crab Shed Light on its Final Moments
The life-saving purpose of the blue blood
Vertebrates attain white blood cells in their blood while invertebrates similar as horseshoe crabs attain amebocytes.
When a quartz cell comes into contact with a pathogen, it releases a chemical that causes local blood clotting, which researchers believe is the mechanism by which dangerous pathogens are sequestered.
Specifically, the blood cells of horseshoe crabs solidify when they are exposed to endotoxin, a common and sometimes deadly product of bacteria that activates the immune system, sometimes leading to fever, organ failure, and kidney failure or septic shock.
Rabbits received interest from researchers and observed it for hours to see if the immune system reacts to indicate the presence of endotoxin.
But horseshoe crab blood amebocytes are a game changer- rather of running time- absorbing tests on rabbits, horseshoe amebocytes can be cast to a specimen.
The substitute for the blue blood of horseshoe crab
In the late 1990s, biologists at the University of Singapore developed a synthetic version of LAL called recombinant factor C (rFC).
Several studies have shown that rFC is as effective as horseshoe crab-derived LAL and is currently on the market.
According to The Verge, Roughly 60 countries have approved the utility of rFC, involving EU countries and China.
A Maryland-based pharmaceutical industry guideline organization, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), needs to look at more data before equating rFCs with LALs as Conservation activists were frustrated because they decided there was one.
Enterprises can choose to use rFC instead of LAL (Eli Lilly already uses it). However, only if you first go through an additional bureaucratic process.
Also read: Horseshoe Crab Blood Harvesting Practices Questioned by Researchers
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