LIFE SAVING BLUE BLOOD

 HORSESHOE CRAB BLOOD 

Horseshoe crabs have extremely valuable blood.They use hemocyanin to transport oxygen throughout their body. 

HEMOCYANIN : a chemical that gives their body that distinctive blue color due to presence of copper element . They have AMEBOCYTE  which work as white blood cells in vertebrates. 

When amebocyte comes into contact with a pathogen, it releases a chemical that causes the local blood to clot. Researchers believe that it is a mechanism of isolating dangerous pathogen. 

Amebocytes in horseshoe crab blood solidify, when it comes contact with endotoxins, a pervasive and sometimes deadly product of bacteria that kicks immune systems into gear, sometimes resulting in fever, organ failure, or septic shock. 

A substance derived from horseshoe blood is called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) . It is valuable as gold . 

a molecule discovered,  which present in LAL is called factor C. Factor C is responsible for clotting action.

In 2003, Lonza group who was a manufacturer , harvest horseshoe crab but this is the only source which couldn't fulfil the requirements. but this overcame when Hygcos  GmbH a manufacturer also harvested the horseshoe crabs. But after sometime horseshoe crab species decline in their population. So that researchers genetically modified the guts of insects- who belong to the same phylum as horseshoe crab - Arthropoda - to produce Factor-C . As a result, the insect began pumping out Factor-C, which could be sold as rFC( recombinant factor -C) on the market as a viable substitute to horseshoe crab blood.