Name: Decoding the Secret Signals of Glow-in-the-Dark Sea Creatures
Uploaded: 2020-03-25T02:35:25.000Z
Duration: 7 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Participle clauses with adverbial meaning

WHILE RESEARCHING CORAL IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS,

THIS MARINE BIOLOGY RESEARCH TEAM  MADE AN ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY...

We had this idea to film, like,  a large piece of a coral reef

and just take photograph, and photograph,  and then stitch them together

to give an idea of what a nighttime fluorescent reef looks like.

We get back to the lab at night,  and we're looking at the photos,

and  there's this little eel, like, sitting in the photo.

We thought there was something wrong with the camera,

Little did we know that the eel was real.

IT WAS SO UNEXPECTED THAT THIS EEL  WOULD EXHIBIT BIOFLUORESCENCE

THAT THIS SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH LED  DR. DAVID GRUBER TO ESTABLISH

A WHOLE NEW REALM OF RESEARCH ON LIFE UNDERWATER.

Luckily I was working with an ichthyologist, John Sparks at the American Museum of Natural History

and we set out on these voyages, this expedition around the world,

AS OPPOSED TO BIOLUMINESCENCE, WHERE ORGANISMS PRODUCE THEIR OWN LIGHT

FLUORESCENCE IS THE PROCESS OF CONVERTING LIGHT TO OTHER WAVELENGTHS.

IT’S NORMALLY INVISIBLE, AND HAD MOSTLY BEEN OBSERVED IN CORAL,

AND SCIENTISTS WEREN’T COMPLETELY SURE WHY.

97% of hard corals have this ability  to absorb the blue ocean light

and turn it into greens, turn it into oranges, turn it into reds.

Is it a way for the corals to call in the symbiotic organisms to inhabit their microbiome?

COMMUNICATION IN AN UNDERWATER ENVIRONMENT IS COMPLEX,

WHERE LIGHT FOLLOWS A DIFFERENT SET OF RULES.

It's because there's no red photons making it there.

Just imagine that scene:  it's like being in a nightclub

What would it mean for animal to just have one color light in its environment?

TO FIND OUT, DAVID AND HIS TEAM VENTURED INTO THE DEPTHS.

Our team goes down about 150 meters, using technical advanced mixed gases.

We then go out and scan the reef at night,

shining blue light on them, and we're looking to see who has the ability to absorb blue light

and send that back out  as a different color.

We found it in blennies, we found it in eels.

TO DATE, DAVID HAS DOCUMENTED OVER 180 SPECIES THAT EMIT THIS SECRET GLOW.

BUT THESE DISCOVERIES ONLY  LED TO MORE QUESTIONS

ABOUT HOW THESE ANIMALS  ARE USING THEIR SUPERPOWER.

In the eyes of these seahorse are these  specific biofluorescent patterns.

Perhaps they're using this fluorescence as a way of marking and seeing each other.

It would make sense for them to blend in perfectly into the red fluorescence of the sea grass.

With Olindias, which is the flower hat jelly,

at the very tips are these green fluorescent pieces

One of the most interesting ones was  the fluorescent swell shark.

The females have almost what looks like a mask, and these are really social animals

So, potentially this is a way for them to have secret little differences on sharks

This made me think, like, “How do I test this?

THE ANSWER WAS TO ASSEMBLE A TEAM OF NEUROSCIENTISTS, ICHTHYOLOGISTS,

EYE DOCTORS, AND ROBOTICISTS TO TAKE A DEEPER DIVE

WHICH IS MUCH MORE SPECIFIC AND SENSITIVE THAN OUR OWN.

When we looked at this shark, it has one visual pigment in its eye,

a rod that sees right at the blue-green interface.

meaning that it can likely see better in the dark,

about a hundred times better than a human.

According to our models, this is creating much more contrast for the sharks

than a non-fluorescent animal,  or a non-fluorescent object.

Like seeing a Las Vegas nightlife scene from an airplane from far away, where patterns

on each shark say, "hey, this is who I am."

BUT BESIDES THE FUN OF EAVESDROPPING  ON A SHARK’S NIGHTLIFE SCENE,

FLUORESCENCE RESEARCH HAS PROVEN SURPRISINGLY APPLICABLE

IN THE 1960s, A MOLECULE CALLED GREEN FLUORESCENT PROTEIN, OR GFP,

IN THE DECADES SINCE, GFP HAS SINGLE-HANDEDLY TRANSFORMED BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE.

by a group of scientists that were interested

in the question of,  "Why is this jellyfish glowing?"

They noticed that the pure bioluminescent machinery was blue.

But the animal in nature was giving off green light.

that was absorbing the blue light  and turning it into green light,

THE CODE FOR GFP CAN SAFELY BE INSERTED  INTO THE GENOME

OF ANY ORGANISM, CREATING A SIMPLE GLOW-IN-THE-DARK TAG,

AN UNPRECEDENTED TOOL TO TRACK EVERYTHING

FROM HOW CANCER CELLS AND INFECTIONS SPREAD

We're such visual learners, and when we see something it causes a cascade of ideas.

The publications are just in the tens of thousands

because this simple little molecule  from a marine creature.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Decoding the Secret Signals of Glow-in-the-Dark Sea Creatures

specific

incredibly

sophisticated

ancient