US Scientists Synthetize Scorpion's Venom

A worker removes a scorpion from a plastic container for venom extraction to produce homeopathic medicine Vidatox at LABIOFAM, the Cuban state manufacturer of medicinal and personal hygienic products in Cienfuegos, Cuba, December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
A worker removes a scorpion from a plastic container for venom extraction to produce homeopathic medicine Vidatox at LABIOFAM, the Cuban state manufacturer of medicinal and personal hygienic products in Cienfuegos, Cuba, December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
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US Scientists Synthetize Scorpion's Venom

A worker removes a scorpion from a plastic container for venom extraction to produce homeopathic medicine Vidatox at LABIOFAM, the Cuban state manufacturer of medicinal and personal hygienic products in Cienfuegos, Cuba, December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
A worker removes a scorpion from a plastic container for venom extraction to produce homeopathic medicine Vidatox at LABIOFAM, the Cuban state manufacturer of medicinal and personal hygienic products in Cienfuegos, Cuba, December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

Researchers at Stanford University have managed to synthetize scorpions' venom, and said it contains two color-changing compounds that could help fight bacterial infection.

The team isolated the compounds in the scorpion's venom, synthesized them in the lab, and verified that the lab-made version of the venom killed staphylococcus and drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria in tissue samples and in mice.

In their study published in the June 10 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers highlighted the potential pharmacological treasures awaiting discovery in the toxins of scorpions, snakes, snails and other poisonous creatures.

Study senior author Richard Zare, professor of chemistry at the Stanford group, said: "By volume, scorpion venom is one of the most precious materials in the world. It would costs $39 million to produce a gallon of it. If you depended only on scorpions to produce it, nobody could afford it, so it's important to identify what the critical ingredients are and be able to synthesize them."

Zare worked with his colleague Lourival Possani from the National University of Mexico. The milked the venom by stimulating the tail with electrical pulses, then, they noticed that the venom changed color, one of the compounds turned red when exposed to air, while the other turned blue.

The researchers said they only had 0.5 microliters of the venom to work with, but the analysis of the compounds helped them making the new version.



Chinese Rover Helps Find Evidence of Ancient Martian Shoreline

(FILES) This undated handout photograph released on June 11, 2021 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows an image taken by a camera released from China's Zhurong Mars rover showing the rover (L) and the landing platform on the surface of Mars. (Photo by HANDOUT / China National Space Administration (CNSA) / AFP) CLIENTS
(FILES) This undated handout photograph released on June 11, 2021 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows an image taken by a camera released from China's Zhurong Mars rover showing the rover (L) and the landing platform on the surface of Mars. (Photo by HANDOUT / China National Space Administration (CNSA) / AFP) CLIENTS
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Chinese Rover Helps Find Evidence of Ancient Martian Shoreline

(FILES) This undated handout photograph released on June 11, 2021 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows an image taken by a camera released from China's Zhurong Mars rover showing the rover (L) and the landing platform on the surface of Mars. (Photo by HANDOUT / China National Space Administration (CNSA) / AFP) CLIENTS
(FILES) This undated handout photograph released on June 11, 2021 by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows an image taken by a camera released from China's Zhurong Mars rover showing the rover (L) and the landing platform on the surface of Mars. (Photo by HANDOUT / China National Space Administration (CNSA) / AFP) CLIENTS

With the assistance of China's Zhurong rover, scientists have gathered fresh evidence that Mars was home to an ocean billions of years ago - a far cry from the dry and desolate world it is today.
Scientists said on Thursday that data obtained by Zhurong, which landed in the northern lowlands of Mars in 2021, and by orbiting spacecraft indicated the presence of geological features indicative of an ancient coastline. The rover analyzed rock on the Martian surface in a location called Utopia Planitia, a large plain in the planet's northern hemisphere.
The researchers said data from China's Tianwen-1 Orbiter, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the robotic six-wheeled rover indicated the existence of a water ocean during a period when Mars might already have become cold and dry and lost much of its atmosphere.
They described surface features such as troughs, sediment channels and mud volcano formations indicative of a coastline, with evidence of both shallow and deeper marine environments, Reuters reported.
"We estimate the flooding of the Utopia Planitia on Mars was approximately 3.68 billion years ago. The ocean surface was likely frozen in a geologically short period," said Hong Kong Polytechnic University planetary scientist Bo Wu, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The ocean appears to have disappeared by approximately 3.42 billion years ago, the researchers said.
"The water was heavily silted, forming the layering structure of the deposits," Hong Kong Polytechnic University planetary scientist and study co-author Sergey Krasilnikov added.
Like Earth and our solar system's other planets, Mars formed about 4.5 billion years ago. At the time the ocean apparently existed, it might already have begun its transition away from being a hospitable planet.
"The presence of an ancient ocean on Mars has been proposed and studied for several decades, yet significant uncertainty remains," Wu said. "These findings not only provide further evidence to support the theory of a Martian ocean but also present, for the first time, a discussion on its probable evolutionary scenario."
Water is seen as a key ingredient for life, and the past presence of an ocean raises the prospect that Mars at least at one time was capable of harboring microbial life.
"At the beginning of Mars' history, when it probably had a thick, warm atmosphere, microbial life was much more likely," Krasilnikov said.
The solar-powered Zhurong, named after a mythical Chinese god of fire, began its work using six scientific instruments on the Martian surface in May 2021 and went into hibernation in May 2022, likely met with excessive accumulation of sand and dust, according to its mission designer. It exceeded its original mission time span of three months.
Researchers have sought to better understand what happened to all the water that once was present on the Martian surface. Another study, published in August and based on seismic data obtained by NASA's robotic InSight lander, indicated that an immense reservoir of liquid water may reside deep under the surface within fractured igneous rocks.