Researchers find unusually elastic protein
Scientists at Heidelberg University have discovered an unusually elastic protein in one of the most ancient groups of animals, the over 600-million-year-old cnidarians. The protein is a part of the "weapons system" that the cnidarians use: a kind of harpoon launched from their body at extremely high speed. The discovery of the hitherto unknown protein in the freshwater polyp Hydra suggests that the molecular mechanism of elasticity could have originated in the cnidarians and evolved to discharge a deadly weapon. Due to the similarity of the protein's amino acid sequence to spidroin of spider silk, the researchers from the Centre for Organismal Studies dubbed the elastic protein cnidoin. The results of the research were published in the journal BMC Biology.