Functional mimicry of sea urchin biomineralization proteins with CaCO-binding peptides selected by phage display.

The intricate process of biomineralization, in sea urchins, involves the precise interplay of highly regulated mineralization proteins and the spatiotemporal coordination achieved through compartmentalization. However, the investigation of biomineralization effector molecules, proteins, is challenging, due to their very low abundance. Therefore, we investigate the functional mimicry in the bioinspired precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO) with artificial peptides selected from a peptide library by phage display based on peptide-binding to calcite and aragonite, respectively.

Metallic nickel nanoparticles and their effect on the embryonic development of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus.

The presence of nanoparticles in many industrial applications and daily products is making it nowadays crucial to assess their impact when exposed to the environment. Metallic nickel nanoparticles (Ni NPs) are of high industrial interest due to their ability to catalyze the reversible hydration of CO2 to carbonic acid at ambient conditions. We characterized metallic Ni NPs by XRD, HRTEM and EDS and determined the solubility of free nickel ions from 3 mg/L metallic Ni NPs in seawater by ICP-MS over 96 h, which was below 3%.