You may have heard that the Australian Box Jellyfish, Chironex fleckeri, has some of the most potent venom of any animal on the planet, powerful enough to kill an adult human in under two minutes. These animals can grow almost a foot-wide bell, and each animals has up to sixty tentacles, each up to three…… Continue reading What Is the Worst a Jellyfish Could Do? Irukandji Syndrome

Two jellies have contributed to Nobel Prize winning research: The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1913 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008. In both cases the animals were actually hydrozoans: Physalia physalis, the Portuguese Man-of-War, and Aequorea victoria, the Crystal jelly. The 2008 prize was awarded for the discovery of green fluorescent protein, also…… Continue reading Man-of-War venom, and the discovery of anaphylaxis

On 3 December 2018, the first jellyfish genome was published online in Nature Ecology and Evolution. To clarify, the is the first genome of a cnidarian with a jellyfish stage (i.e. medusa). There are currently a few other “jellies”, like the hydroid Hydra vulgaris and starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis, that have had their genome available for…… Continue reading Stung by a Moon – Celebration of the Aurelia aurita genome