Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Dr. Matthew Mason: Further Information...

University Physiologist Tel: +44 (0)1223 333829, Fax: +44 (0)1223 333840, E-mail: mjm68@cam.ac.uk

Reid, D.G., Mason, M.J., Chan, B.K.K. & Duer, M.J. (2012) Characterization of the phosphatic mineral of the barnacle Ibla cumingi at atomic level by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance: comparison with other phosphatic biominerals. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 9: 1510-1516.

In this study, centred at the University of Cambridge's Department of Chemistry, we used solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (SSNMR) imaging to Ibla cumingi. As a "stalked barnacle" rather than one of the more familiar sessile types found on rocky shores, Ibla is a curious creature looking something like a hairy finger, its shell-plates representing the finger-nail. It lives in crevices between rocks in Hong Kong, among other places. Although most barnacles use calcium carbonate to reinforce their shell-plates, ibliform barnacles, very unusually, use a form of calcium phosphate, more similar to what is found in vertebrate bone.

We found that the mineral in the shell-plates of Ibla is strikingly different from both vertebrate bone and the more crystalline fluoroapatite of the brachiopods Lingula and Discinisca (see our previous work on this: Neary et al., 2011). Vertebrates, barnacles and brachiopods are very distantly related from each other, each being placed in a separate major division of the animal kingdom (Deuterostomia, Ecdysozoa and Lophotrochozoa respectively). Within each group, calcium phosphate mineralization appears to have evolved independently, and in chemically distinct forms.

To access this article via the Journal of the Royal Society Interface website, please click here.

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