Research Projects

King Kong toxin, a component of the venom in some poisonous marine snails, has a peculiar power to go with its peculiar name. When injected into a meek little lobster in a tank full of superiors, the poison induces delusions of grandeur; the little guy starts marching around like he’s king of the tank. Any given venom can contain hundreds of toxins such as King Kong, including some that are medically useful, but teasing them out of a venom sample is no mean feat. Now, in a methodological breakthrough, researchers at The Rockefeller University have devised a method to speed up this distillation process by orders of magnitude, raising the prospect that they will be able to test a great many of these molecules for their medical potential.  more...