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Sea-urchin spines generate electrical signals in flowing water
- NEWS AND VIEWS
- 25 February 2026
Sea-urchin spines generate electrical signals in flowing water
The spines of sea urchins can generate a voltage when water moves around them — a phenomenon that could be used to design underwater flow sensors.
Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert0
Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert
Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert is in the Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA, and the Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
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Few animals have been as valuable to science as sea urchins. These spiky invertebrates have been used to study fertilization and embryogenesis, and the mechanical properties of their spines have been long admired1. Now, writing in Nature, Chen et al.2 report that sea-urchin spines, which are made up of a ‘stereom’ structure that includes interconnected struts and holes3, can generate voltages in response to water flow. This phenomenon, called mechanoelectrical sensing, arises because of size gradients in the stereom. Sea urchins were known to be sensitive to touch, changes in light intensity, temperature and the orientation of their bodies, but mechanoelectrical sensing, which, the authors argue, makes the spines sensitive to water flow, has not been observed before. The principle behind this could be used to make devices for underwater flow sensing.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00374-6
References
Yang, T. et al. Nature Commun. 13, 6083 (2022).
Chen, A. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10164-9 (2026).
Finnemore, A. S. et al. Adv. Mater. 21, 3928–3932 (2009).
Beniash, E., Aizenberg, J., Addadi, L. & Weiner, S. Proc. R. Soc. B. 264, 461–465 (1997).
Politi Y., Arad, T., Klein, E., Weiner, S. & Addadi, L. Science 306, 1161–1164 (2004).
Killian C. E. et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 18404–18409 (2009).
Gilbert, P. U. P. A. et al. Sci. Adv. 8, eabl9653 (2022).
Stifler, C. A., Killian C. E. & Gilbert, P. U. P. A. Cryst. Growth Des. 21, 6635–6641 (2021).
Albéric, M. et al. J. Struct. Biol. X 1, 100004 (2019).
Politi, Y. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 17362–17366 (2008).
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
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Subjects
Materials science
Physical chemistry
Biophysics
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