Dalatias licha, aka the kitefin shark. Photo: Mallefet/Louvain/Frontiers in Marine Science
R
esearchers
have known for a while now that some sharks can glow in the dark. But not many. Until recently, it was only thought that around a dozen species lit up in the dark depths of the ocean. A new study in the journal
Frontiers in Marine Science reported that three more can do it, and one species, the kitefin shark, can grow up to six feet in length.
The discovery was made when shark researchers were poking around off the eastern coast of New Zealand, and it adds a whole lot more information to the bioluminescence canon. The expedition, in which the researchers pulled blackbelly lanternsharks, southern lanternsharks, and kitefin sharks up from an area of the deep sea known as the “twilight zone,” was yet another reminder that there’s still so much going on in the ocean that we don’t know about. The twilight zone is the region from a depth of 660 to 3,300 feet, where, as the
Three new deep-sea shark species have been found off the coast of New Zealand and they all glow in the dark. Scientists were studying fish in the Chatham Rise off of New Zealand’s east coast when they made the incredible discovery.
The kitefin shark, blackbelly lanternshark, and southern lanternshark were glowing in the dark because of bioluminescence (biochemical emission of light by living organisms). The kitefin shark can grow as long as 180 cm (5.9 feet) which makes it the largest-known luminous vertebrate that has been found thus far (also known as the “giant luminous shark”). (Pictures can be seen here.)
We Just Found The Largest Luminous Glowing Shark Species in The World
3 MARCH 2021
Three species of shark that inhabit the twilit depths of the ocean just turned out to have been bioluminescent this whole time.
The kitefin shark, the blackbelly lanternshark, and the southern lanternshark have all been discovered to have softly glowing blue patterns on their skin, a first for sharks found in New Zealand waters.
Of those three, the kitefin shark, which grows up to 180 centimetres (5 feet 11 inches) long, is now the largest known bioluminescent shark in the world.
Bioluminescence is not an uncommon trait for living things to evolve. Even humans glow (although too faintly to actually see). It seems to be most useful for life forms that live in the dark - night-glowing fungus, insects in dark caves… and in the depths of the ocean, so deep that the rays of the Sun can t penetrate the water.
Scientists successfully restore circadian function in the liver of arrhythmic mice
Circadian clocks, which regulate the metabolic functions of all living beings over a period of about 24 hours, are one of the most fundamental biological mechanisms. In humans, their disruption is the cause of many metabolic diseases such as diabetes or serious liver diseases.
Although scientists have been studying this mechanism for many years, little is known about how it works. Thanks to an observation tool based on bioluminescence, a research team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) were able to demonstrate that cells that compose a particular organ can be in-phase, even in the absence of the central brain clock or of any other clocks in the body.
American scientists receive the 2021 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize
FRANKFURT am MAIN. Two American scientists, Bonnie L. Bassler and Michael R. Silverman, receive the 2021 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, which is endowed with 120,000 €.
Bassler is Professor at Princeton University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Michael R. Silverman is Emeritus Professor of the Agouron Institute in La Jolla.
The two researchers are honoured for their ground-breaking discoveries concerning bacterial quorum sensing , which refers to sophisticated systems of cell-to-cell communication that bacteria use to coordinate group behaviors.
The award ceremony in St. Paul s Church, which is traditionally held on March 14, Paul Ehrlich s birthday, has been postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Bassler and Silverman will receive the award at the ceremony in 2022.