Will Cameron's deep-sea voyage yield breakthrough drugs?
Blockbuster-moviemaker-turned-aquanaut James Cameron's solo dive in the Pacific to the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep site last month opens up a vast, under-explored region of the world's oceans to researchers. There, scientists hope to discover, retrieve, and study a host of previously unknown organisms and chemical compounds that may someday help solve decades-old medical mysteries.
"What better place to look for adaptations and unusual compounds that have unusual characteristics than in the most extreme environments we can go to on this planet," says Richard Lutz, a professor of marine ecology and biology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents … Read more