When it comes to blood, people's first impression may be 'bright red', but you may also know that red is not a common characteristic of all blood. Many crustaceans and mollusks actually have blue blood.
Why is blood red and blue? This is because these proteins in the blood, which are responsible for carrying oxygen, contain different metal ions as the core. In our familiar red blood, hemoglobin is responsible for carrying oxygen, and its core metal element is iron. In blue blood, hemocyanin plays a similar role, and its core is copper.
Blue blood seems to be far away from people's life. It may be regarded as a kind of cold knowledge about animals, such as the following figure:
But! In fact, there is a kind of blue blood and everyone's health will be linked, that is horseshoe crab (Hou) blood.
Horseshoe crab is a kind of strange looking marine animals, its blood is also very special gray blue. But this is not the point. The key point is that there is a special component in the blood of crab, which can react with bacteria and endotoxin, and condense a thick gel around them.
What's the use of this? It's quite useful. Bacterial endotoxin is a kind of harmful substance that may remain in injectable drugs and medical supplies. In order to ensure the safety of users, it needs to be tested, and the use of tachypleus amebocyte lysate can effectively carry out such testing to ensure people's medical safety. Now, it's also a common method.
How to get tachypleus amebocyte lysate? The following pictures are for reference. This is a series of pictures on the production of tachypleus amebocyte lysate published in wired
After catching some tachypleus amebocyte lysates, people will check their physical condition, and then take blood with special devices. Horseshoe crab will not be killed. After blood is taken, they will be put back into the sea. The gray blue liquid in the bottle is the blood obtained, in which the deformed cells are separated, and then the cells are destroyed, and the coagulant protein is extracted, so that the final Limulus amebocyte lysate can be obtained.
Like the red blood of blood donors, blue blood can also save people's lives~
However, for the Chinese on the tip of the tongue, the value of horseshoe crab seems to be more like a delicious meal
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