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Horseshoe crabs primarily live at the water's bottom but they can swim if needed. In the modern day, their distribution is limited, only found along the east coasts of North America and South Asia. Horseshoe crabs are often caught for their blood, which contains Limulus amebocyte lysate, a chemical used to detect bacterial endotoxins.
Atlantic horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus. Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) is an aqueous extract of motile blood cells from the Atlantic horseshoe crab Limulus polyphemus.LAL reacts with bacterial endotoxins such as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which are components of the bacterial capsule, the outermost membrane of cell envelope of gram-negative bacteria.
The horseshoe crab has been scuttling in the ocean and tidal pools for more than 400 million years, playing a vital role in the East Coast ecosystem along with being a prized item for fishing bait ...
Similarly to some of the white blood cells of vertebrates, in many species amebocytes are found in the blood or body fluid (e.g. as the blood cells of Limulus, the horseshoe crab) [1] and play a role in the defense of the organism against pathogens. Depending on the species, an amebocyte may also digest and distribute food, dispose of wastes ...
Fishermen harvest horseshoe crabs so the animals can be used as bait and so their blood can be used to make medical products. Conservationists have long pushed to limit the harvest of the animals ...
Aside from their blood, horseshoe crab populations occupy an important ecological niche in estuarine and coastal habitats along the Mid-Atlantic coast. Adult horseshoe crabs are food for sea ...
A protein from horseshoe crab blood is also under investigation as a novel antibiotic. [30] Procuring the raw materials for LAL testing involves collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs from wild populations. Horseshoe crabs are returned to the ocean after bleeding, however, there is a level of mortality and sub-lethal impact involved.
The group has hardly changed in appearance in hundreds of millions of years; the modern horseshoe crabs look almost identical to prehistoric genera and are considered to be living fossils. The most notable difference between ancient and modern forms is that the abdominal segments in present species are fused into a single unit in adults.