Tiny pumps protect many animals from toxins - sometimes a little too well.
It collects food by spinning a sinewy, mucous net. Yet as soon as the poisons find their way into the marine worm's belly, they are spit back out into the mire. At a nearby hospital, a breast cancer patient is losing her battle against cancer because the tenaciously dividing cancer cells in her body are using the same molecular gadgetry to jettison chemotherapy drugs back into her bloodstream, preventing them from attacking her tumor. The fates of the worm and the woman are linked by a sub-microscopic pumping mechanism. Embedded within a cell's membrane, this protein protects a cell by ejecting a variety of molecules, in many cases, toxins, on contact.