Sponges - Natural medicine cabinets

Sponge (seaweed) creates glass needles up to meters long, providing effective anti-cancer substances and is able to purify seawater to remove toxins. Thanks to these diverse and very valuable abilities, sponges become a popular research object in the field of medicine and pharmacy.

Professor Werner Muller of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (Germany) has been studying for decades to explain "sea creatures' sponges can produce an endless amount of bioactive substance". The sponge is really "a natural medicine cabinet" : From sponge extract can produce drugs for cancer and viral dermatitis (Herpes). Recently, this type of marine creature has been given special attention in materials science and nanotechnology. It can be made from sponges for bone replacement materials, for fillings as well as for the production of protective linings for ships and many other materials.

Werner Müller - sponge researcher .Photo: SK & ĐS

Sponge is a highly resistant organism

Sponge is also a kind of creature that has strong resistance to poison. Coral, algae and fish when approaching the sponges are "beaten with chemical weapons" . According to Andreas Kunzmann of the Center for Tropical Marine Ecology in Bremen, actually, not direct sponges. Exporting toxins to the resistance that "mobilizes, concentrates these types of bacteria that can fight back".

That's why GS. Muller said the sponge also contained great potential for the pharmaceutical industry. Sponges are extremely supple even in extreme conditions such as in cold frosts or in long dry conditions in the Amazon region. Sponges of the oldest animal appear on earth. According to the researchers, it is thanks to the evolutionary period of over 800 million years that many substances in them have been perfected and achieved the highest efficiency.

On the sea as well as in the ports, sponges are very powerful sanitation troops. One kilogram of sponge can filter a ton of water every day. Hazardous substances in the water are unlikely to cause harm to them. Sponges can receive up to 15,000 times more mercury than their surroundings without being contaminated by pollution.

The focus of research in recent years on this type of creature is the chain of sponges formed from quartz glass. To manufacture industrial quartz glass requires a temperature of 2,000 degrees and some special chemicals. Meanwhile, naturally, sponges can produce quartz glass from special enzymes at room temperature and under normal physiological conditions. Currently, people are studying to mix biological silicate into toothpaste to protect teeth. In addition, this substance also positively affects bone metabolism as in the case of fractures.

Quartz glass needles have excellent light conductivity

However, the sponge has many other uses, some sponges have the ability to create quartz glass needles that are several meters long, about 1mm in diameter, which have good light conductivity. According to Muller, because of this feature "they are particularly interested in the telecommunications industry" . The quality of light in organic materials is much better than the current quartz glass network.

In GS's office. Muller has a skeleton of a "rag sponge", which is cylindrical and has many small holes. The Japanese call this sponge "the prison of couples". Larvae of some types of crabs come through these small holes into the sponge. Often they live in pairs here. But when they reach a certain size, they cannot go through these holes so they have to live their whole lives in them. In addition to crabs, there are a number of snails and soil bugs trapped in the foam.