Publication Date:
2004-11-13
Description:
The skeletons of adult echinoderms comprise large single crystals of calcite with smooth convoluted fenestrated morphologies, raising many questions about how they form. By using water etching, infrared spectroscopy, electron diffraction, and environmental scanning electron microscopy, we show that sea urchin spine regeneration proceeds via the initial deposition of amorphous calcium carbonate. Because most echinoderms produce the same type of skeletal material, they probably all use this same mechanism. Deposition of transient amorphous phases as a strategy for producing single crystals with complex morphology may have interesting implications for the development of sophisticated materials.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Politi, Yael -- Arad, Talmon -- Klein, Eugenia -- Weiner, Steve -- Addadi, Lia -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Nov 12;306(5699):1161-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Structural Biology, 76100 Rehovot, Israel.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15539597" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Calcium Carbonate/chemistry/*metabolism
;
Crystallization
;
Microscopy, Electron
;
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning
;
*Regeneration
;
Sea Urchins/anatomy & histology/*physiology
;
Spectrophotometry, Infrared
;
Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
