The study of poisons in medicine is usually associated with the need to better understand the mechanism of its action and develop an antidote, as the Internet publication for girls and women from 14 to 35 years old Pannochka. net But in some cases, researchers are working on deadly creatures to get their toxins from drugs.

This is not the first year that a group of scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia.

In the magazine Toxins, they talked about how they learned to receive valuable and rare raw materials - the poison of the Australian cubomeduz, one of the most poisonous creatures on Earth.

Poisons play a very important role in the animal kingdom. Some creatures have learned to immobilize their prey by poison, while others use chemical weapons to avoid the fate of breakfast. Despite the enormous biological role and variety of natural poisons, the omnipotent man still does not know much about them.

The researcher-venomologist (the expert on poisons) from the University of Queensland Bryan G Fry (Bryan G Fry) says that extracting the poison from the Australian cubomeduz is much more complicated than from various snakes and spiders. Perhaps, for this reason, scientists do not know the poison of an underwater predator.

"Jellyfish and their closest relatives are the oldest living on our planet of poisonous creatures. However, our studies of these most interesting organisms are limited by the limited possibilities for gathering poison, "says the Venomologist.

Kubomeduzy, studied by Professor Fry and his colleagues, refer to the species Chironex fleckeri. According to the National Science Foundation, this species of jellyfish is the most poisonous creature on the planet. The poison of this jellyfish can stop a person's heart in less than 3 minutes. On average, one or two Australians die each year after a chance encounter with cubomudes near the coast of Queensland.

Despite the danger of these free-floating creatures in the ocean, in the history of their poison, fewer articles were written than are written about snake venom in just a year. And all because of the lack of samples. Professor Fry says that now they have developed an extremely effective and practical way of obtaining the poison of cubomedusa, which will satisfy the demands of scientists and will give impetus to new studies.

The described method is based on the use of ethyl alcohol, which causes poisonous stinging capsules of the jellyfish (nematocysts) to extract the maximum amount of poison. In fact, this method allows the milking of jellyfish on demand, extracting enough venom for scientific research. The poison obtained in this way contains several complex toxins, among which CfTX-A / B, CfTX-1 and completely unexplored peptides.

While we do not know what healing powers are contained in the poison of cubomeduza - it will show time. But previously Professor Fry very successfully worked with the poison of the Komodo monitor, finding out that he has antihypertensive and anticoagulant properties.

The professor sees the irony in the fact that ethanol, ideal for "milking" cubomeduz, is also a means that can not be strictly applied to people stung by this creature - alcohol in such cases will only exacerbate the situation.

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