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Horseshoe crabs be like
(i.ibb.co)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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I find it hard to understand, what special thing the blood has, that is not synthetically manufacturable. With most foodstuff companies trying to synthetically manufacture as much of the food as they can, what makes this "Near Threatened" animal, so important to harvest?
I googled it for you, there is LAL which is a blood clotting agent (that exists only in the blood of horseshoe crabs) that reacts with the bacterial capsule which makes it important for vaccine safety tests. Alternatives do exist but ya know, money is more important to corporations than some animal's life.
What are the alternatives, and how can we reduce their costs to match that of horseshoe crab blood?
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