Thursday 18 April 2013

Blue blood

Every day is a school day!
I work, a few days a week in a busy hospital pharmacy, and today, on a visit to Quality Control, I learned all about the horse shoe crab and it's green/blue blood.
Apparently the horse shoe crab has copper rather than iron in it's blood, which explains the unusal colour, and it is this that is very useful for staining, and therefore detecting, bacteria.
Certain bacteria (gram negative bacteria) don't show up with more conventional stains, that are designed to stain bacteria purple, but the blood of the horse shoe crab, is an effective stain and highlights any possible contamination. The crabs blood is harvested, for use in the laboratory and then they are released back into the wild. 
It brings a whole new meaning to the term blue blood.

No comments:

Post a Comment