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RE: Aquaherp
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by AquaHerp on October 17, 2009
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Mail this to a friend!
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Randal...I owe ya man. Hey I need you to call me anyway. But, yes, it's right up there with the Taj Mahal and the House of Corn in Iowa!
Although we are not regularly open to the public, we give the occasional tours, hence the exhibits.
The facility is the Serpentarium portion of the Natural Toxins Research Center at Texas A&M-Kingsville. We house in the neighborhood of 500 venomous snakes of a variety of species from around the world. The NTRC is engaged in the biomedical research of snake venoms. Cancer, stroke, deep-vein thrombosis, Parkinson's disease and many more could one day be routinely treated with drugs derived from snake venoms.
The center is split into two parts. The laboratory is equipped with state-of-the art instrumentation and some of the leading scientists. They are doing all the technical side of things; isolating molecules, purifying proteins and even cloning of many of these venoms. If a snake were to become extinct, we can still study the venom thanks to the science of cloning!
The other half of the center is the new Serpentarium. Since I seem to find the effects of venom on my own system more ummmmmm...fascinating, I spend most of my time there pretending I’m the boss. At my place we house the snakes, breed, collect new specimens along with geographical data, conduct hemorrhagic testing, antivenom testing, assisted insemination studies, LD50s and naturally extract and process the venom.
More info can be found on the website at: www.ntrc.tamuk.edu/
I'll get some pictures up soon.
Although we are technically not open to the general public, fellow scientists and herpers are always welcome! We are about 45 minutes out of Corpus Christi.
DH
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