Two sea creatures doing what comes naturally were the genesis of two ideas written about in the December 12, 2009 issue of The Economist.
Idea #1: The glue “secreted” by the sandcastle worm “to stick bits of sand together to form its casing” (instead of building its shell directly from its own body minerals) may be used to help heal compound fratures of human bones, especially the fragments that are too small to be screwed and pinned together. ”Medics have long sought a glue to do this work, and now Russell Stewart of the University of Utah may have found one in the secretions of a marine worm.”
Idea #2: Inspired by “a Japanese company (that) hooked up the lights on a Christmas tree to a tank containing an electric eel,” researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland have developed a photocell — an actual battery that can power things — based on the way the eel’s “living cell membranes and their proteins” communicate back and forth.
When we speak of “harnessing nature,” we generally mean in some grandly visible way, like a hydroelectric dam. But two sea creatutes, doing their hardly observable little thing?