Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.; Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.; Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
Sci Adv. 2016 May 13;2(5):e1600112. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1600112. eCollection 2016 May.
In 1678, Stefano Lorenzini first described a network of organs of unknown function in the torpedo ray-the ampullae of Lorenzini (AoL). An individual ampulla consists of a pore on the skin that is open to the environment, a canal containing a jelly and leading to an alveolus with a series of electrosensing cells. The role of the AoL remained a mystery for almost 300 years until research demonstrated that skates, sharks, and rays detect very weak electric fields produced by a potential prey. The AoL jelly likely contributes to this electrosensing function, yet the exact details of this contribution remain unclear. We measure the proton conductivity of the AoL jelly extracted from skates and sharks. The room-temperature proton conductivity of the AoL jelly is very high at 2 ± 1 mS/cm. This conductivity is only 40-fold lower than the current state-of-the-art proton-conducting polymer Nafion, and it is the highest reported for a biological material so far. We suggest that keratan sulfate, identified previously in the AoL jelly and confirmed here, may contribute to the high proton conductivity of the AoL jelly with its sulfate groups-acid groups and proton donors. We hope that the observed high proton conductivity of the AoL jelly may contribute to future studies of the AoL function.
1678 年，Stefano Lorenzini 首次描述了电鳐中一种功能未知的器官网络——罗氏壶腹（Ampullae of Lorenzini，AoL）。每个罗氏壶腹由皮肤上通向外界的一个孔、一个含有凝胶的通道以及一个带有一系列电感受器细胞的肺泡组成。AoL 的作用在近 300 年的时间里一直是个谜，直到研究表明，鳐鱼、鲨鱼和鳐鱼可以探测到潜在猎物产生的非常微弱的电场。AoL 凝胶可能有助于这种电感应功能，但这一贡献的确切细节仍不清楚。我们测量了从鳐鱼和鲨鱼中提取的 AoL 凝胶的质子电导率。室温下，AoL 凝胶的质子电导率非常高，为 2±1 mS/cm。这一电导率仅比目前最先进的质子导电聚合物 Nafion 低 40 倍，是迄今为止报道的生物材料中的最高值。我们认为，先前在 AoL 凝胶中发现并在此得到证实的硫酸角质素可能通过其硫酸盐基团（酸基团和质子供体）对 AoL 凝胶的高质子电导率做出贡献。我们希望 AoL 凝胶观察到的高质子电导率可能有助于未来对 AoL 功能的研究。
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