{"id":240832,"date":"2026-07-14T12:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/bio-metal-exploring-the-metallic-mystery-of-an-ancient-maw"},"modified":"2026-07-14T12:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T17:21:10","slug":"bio-metal-exploring-the-metallic-mystery-of-an-ancient-maw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/bio-metal-exploring-the-metallic-mystery-of-an-ancient-maw","title":{"rendered":"Bio-metal: Exploring the metallic mystery of an ancient maw"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/bio-metal-exploring-the-metallic-mystery-of-an-ancient-maw.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When playing the classic game \u201c20 Questions,\u201d one may begin with the common opener: \u201cAnimal, vegetable, or mineral?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the ancient sea worm Perinereis cultrifera (which is still around today), the answer might not be so simple. Along with other predatory bristle worms, Perinereis cultrifera has jaws made from structural proteins and ions, which it uses for eating, crushing or biting. The unique makeup and properties of these jaws led some researchers to coin a new term to describe these types of materials: bio-metals, an emerging field of biophysical study.<\/p>\n<p>The term \u201cbio-metal\u201d goes beyond identifiers like \u201cmetallike biomaterials\u201d or \u201cbiomaterials with metallike properties,\u201d which have been used in scientific literature to describe biomaterials with conductivity or strength values similar to metals. Instead, bio-metals can be categorized by three qualities: hardness, strain mechanics and ion-protein structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When playing the classic game \u201c20 Questions,\u201d one may begin with the common opener: \u201cAnimal, vegetable, or mineral?\u201d For the ancient sea worm Perinereis cultrifera (which is still around today), the answer might not be so simple. Along with other predatory bristle worms, Perinereis cultrifera has jaws made from structural proteins and ions, which it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1506,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}