Drugs from the deep: Scientists scour oceans

SOME send divers in speed boats, others dispatch submersible robots to search the seafloor, and one team deploys a "mud missile" — all tools used by scientists to scour the world's oceans for the next potent cancer treatment or antibiotic.

A medicinal molecule could be found in microbes scooped up in sediment, be produced by porous sponges or sea squirts — barrel-bodied creatures that cling to rocks or the undersides of boats — or by bacteria living symbiotically in a snail.