A nanoscale look at how shells and coral form revealed a mineral that, until now, had never been seen in living organisms – and indicates that biomineralization is more complex than we imagined.
Exactly how does coral make its skeleton, a sea urchin grow a spine, or an abalone form the mother-of-pearl in its shell? A new study at the Advanced Light Source at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) revealed that this process of biomineralization, which sea creatures use to lock carbon away in their bodies, is more complex and diverse than previously thought.
Researchers studied the edges of samples from coral, sea urchin, and mollusks, where temporary building blocks known as “mineral precursors” start to form the new shell or skeleton. There, they found a surprise: Corals and mollusks produced a mineral precursor that had never been observed before in living organisms, and had only recently been created synthetically.
They also found variety in the types of building blocks present. Scientists expected to see “amorphous” precursors, minerals that lack a repeating atomic structure. They did – but they also found “crystalline” precursors, minerals that are more structured and orderly. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
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