The Committee to Nuke Elysium

If you attach certain molecules to cadmium telluride quantum dots, they will latch onto certain targets, making it possible to detect trace amounts of substances ranging from pesticides to cancer cells.

As versatile as cadmium telluride quantum dots are, however, they’re not easy to make. It’s especially tedious to fashion them so that they’re not toxic to living cells, since both cadmium and tellurium are nasty metals. In the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology, a group of scientists at Kings College London offer a remarkably easy way to make them.

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Earthworms can sense metals in their meals. They immediately respond by making special enzymes. Exposing a worm to cadmium, for example, causes it to produce enzymes called metallothionein in its gut. The metallothionein grabs hold of the cadmium and stores it away in special cavities inside the cells, where it undergoes chemical reactions to make it less dangerous to the worm. Then immune cells attack the cells and engulf them. The worm eventually excretes them safely out of its body.