Why is horseshoe crab blood expensive?
The growth of limulus is slow. With the increasing demand, more than 500,000 horseshoe crabs are caught alive and bled every year in Yao Company. Limulus resources are in short supply and are on the verge of extinction. Chinese horseshoe crab is listed as a national second-class protected animal.
The blood of horseshoe crab contains copper ions, which can accurately and quickly detect whether the human body is sick due to bacterial infection, and can also monitor toxin pollution. Coupled with its medical value, the existing scientific and technological means can not artificially synthesize rare chemicals in horseshoe crab blood.
Why is limulus blood blue?
There are hemoglobin and hemocyanin in animal blood, and their function is to transport oxygen. However, most animals rely on iron-containing hemoglobin to transport oxygen, while horseshoe crab relies on hemocyanin to transport oxygen. Copper contained in protein transporting oxygen will appear blue when combined with oxygen. So the horseshoe crab blood we see is blue drops ~
Why is horseshoe crab endangered?
The huge profits of horseshoe crab lead to overfishing. With the medicinal value of horseshoe crab becoming more and more extensive, many restaurants began to advocate that horseshoe crab meat can help relieve Shao and restore aphrodisiac. For people's fresh taste, horseshoe crab has become a "delicious" on the table. Tip: Limulus blood is only used to detect bacteria, but it cannot be used as medicine. Copper ions can cause hepatitis and cell necrosis. Shark meat does not have such a powerful function, and it contains purine and allergic protein, which is easy to cause pulmonary edema.
Why is horseshoe crab called "living fossil"?
The ancestors of horseshoe crab appeared in the Paleozoic Devonian in geological history, when dinosaurs had not yet risen and primitive fish had just come out. With the passage of time, its contemporaries have either evolved or died out, but only horseshoe crab has remained primitive and ancient since it came out more than 400 million years ago, so horseshoe crab is called "living fossil".
What does limulus know?
Horseshoe crab is also called horseshoe crab because it looks like shrimp and crab. It is an ancient arthropod, not a fish, and feeds on small crustaceans, small mollusks, annelids, starworms and other animals. There are two subfamilies, three genera and four species of horseshoe crab in the world. Because of its unique blue blood value to medicine, it has become the "crown of blood donation" of human beings and is called "limulus reagent" by the medical community.
Distribution range of horseshoe crab
American horseshoe crab: distributed in the East China Sea of North America, that is, south of Nova Scotia, Canada, along the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of Maine, USA. Chinese horseshoe crab: mainly distributed in coastal waters of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian, and found abroad in Japan and the Philippines. Southern sharks: distributed in India, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Round-tailed horseshoe crab: distributed in India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Indonesia. Limulus limulus is also produced in the coastal areas of Guangxi Soft State, Beihai, Hainan Danzhou, Lingao Chengmai and Haikou. Fred, an American zoologist, found that one was infected with Gram-negative bacteria, but its blood magically coagulated into colloid when studying horseshoe crab in 1956.
Many experiments have found that when limulus blood is exposed to bacterial endotoxin, a special enzyme will be activated to coagulate the blood and surround the toxin. 1968, a substance that coagulates when it meets toxin was isolated from blue blood, and a natural limulus reagent for detecting bacterial endotoxin was developed, which saved countless lives. Therefore, protecting limulus is also protecting ourselves ~