A new look at the starlet sea anemone’s stinger gets right to the point.
Live-animal images and 3-D computer reconstructions have revealed the complex architecture of the tiny creature’s needlelike weapons. Like a harpoon festooned with venomous barbs, the stinger rapidly transforms as it fires, biologists Matt Gibson, Ahmet Karabulut and colleagues report June 17 in Nature Communications.
Scientists can now see in exquisite detail “what this apparatus looks like before, during and after firing,” says Gibson, of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo.
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