{"id":908572,"date":"2026-07-02T23:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T23:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/908572\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T23:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T23:36:13","slug":"a-sea-anemone-uses-cardib-to-fight-viruses-and-its-even-more-bizarre-than-it-sounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/908572\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sea Anemone Uses CARDIB to Fight Viruses\u2014and It’s Even More Bizarre Than It Sounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Floating outside the salt marsh silt it usually nestles in, the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) looks a little bit like a miniature squid or those alien heptapods from Arrival (2016)<\/a>. This tiny, translucent, tentacle monster has teetered on the verge<\/a> of endangered status for decades\u2014despite a healthy population now grown<\/a> as a \u201cmodel organism\u201d for lab experiments.<\/p>\n

But researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte have discovered something incredible within this sea anemone\u2019s immune system, which might change both how humanity protects these creatures and modern medicine: N. vectensis produces a previously unknown protein, called the \u201cCARD Inhibitor Binding protein,\u201d which boosts its protection against viral infections. The protein constitutes \u201can ancient mechanism,\u201d as the study\u2019s lead author Ton Sharoni and his colleagues put it in their new paper<\/a>, a long hidden parallel track in immune system evolution that could revolutionize treatments against viruses.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans and sea anemones both need protection from viruses, but this work shows that evolution can organize those defenses in fundamentally different ways,\u201d experimental biologist Yehu Moran, Sharoni\u2019s co-lead author, explained<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n

The protein, which the researchers have named CARDIB, superficially resembled a well-known antiviral protein found in humans and other species known as MAVS, mitochondrial antiviral-signaling protein. But the similarities stopped there.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about CARDIB suggested it should function like MAVS,\u201d Moran said \u201cInstead, we discovered that it does the exact opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pumping the brakes <\/p>\n

When a viral infection appears in humans and other vertebrate species, MAVS proteins kick the immune system into action. These signalling molecules serve a variety of defensive purposes, including spurring the production of cytokines<\/a> and inducing apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death that prevents pathogens from replicating by killing off infected cell hosts. CARDIB does none of this.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than activating antiviral defenses,\u201d Moran noted, \u201cCARDIB normally suppresses them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers determined this by creating tailored mutant versions of N. vectensis in the lab via CRISPR gene-editing tools. They then tested these experimental sea anemones, which no longer had the gene needed to produce CARDIB proteins, against the version of N. vectensis found in nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe results were completely counterintuitive,\u201d Sharoni said. \u201cAlthough CARDIB acts as a brake on the immune system under normal conditions, that brake turns out to be essential for mounting an effective antiviral response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sea anemones that could not produce CARDIB proved to be much more vulnerable to infections, the researchers reported in their new study, published this June in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. By contrast, they noted, those producing CARDIB killed off less of its infected cells via apoptosis, arguably more judiciously, showing \u201ca slower but sustained antiviral response.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the immortal words of the other<\/a>, no less powerful Cardi B: \u201cYou gotta switch it up sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

648\u2009million years in the making <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A field setup of estuary water for testing the CARDIB in sea anemones. Credit: Sydney Birch \/ University of North Carolina at CharlotteThe starlet sea anemone\u2019s immune system dates back at least 648 million years ago to the primordial \u201csnowball Earth\u201d period known as the Cryogenian. According to Moran, Sharoni, and their coauthors, their findings challenge the notion that more-or-less all animals on Earth inherited the same shared antiviral defenses from a common ancestor.<\/p>\n

To further test CARDIB\u2019s antiviral utility, Hebrew University\u2019s researchers partnered with biologists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to test how N. vectensis fared against its CRISPR-edited sea anemone control group in real-life ecosystem conditions.<\/p>\n

UNC Charlotte\u2019s scientists placed the creatures in samples of native estuary water typically inhabited by this sea anemone in nearby Georgetown, South Carolina. It only took a few days (96 hours) to notice how much better the CARDIB-making sea anemones survived and thrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis demonstrated that the pathway we discovered is not simply a laboratory phenomenon,\u201d said Moran. \u201cIt plays a crucial role in helping these animals cope with the viral challenges they face in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The find opens up the possibility that other undiscovered species might have also independently evolved distinct immune system molecules\u2014future work that might one day help medical researchers prevent certain viruses from blowing up into deadly pandemics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Floating outside the salt marsh silt it usually nestles in, the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) looks a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":908573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[336333,76160,53070,271515,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-908572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-antivirals","tag-marine-animals","tag-marine-conservation","tag-medical-discoveries","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}