Researchers developed “beetlejuice” in the laboratory, and a new virus was revealed from the beetle’s seed

Horror comedy Beetlejuicen the sequel is now playing in cinemas. The name comes from the English way of pronouncing Betelgeuse, which is the name of the ghost character in the film.

Beetle also means beetle and juice juice. So what kind of pleasure would this “beetlejuice” be? Some kind of booth juice?

Rutgersin university researchers have an answer for us. They put mealworms in a blender and the end result was a kind of beetle smoothie. That is, a real protein shake.

In the journal Cell however, the motive of the published study was not culinary recreation but a virological peek.

The giant mealworm is the larva of a giant mealybug, a type of beetle. Chubby worms are a great treat for pet lizards. In the United States, these larvae are being killed by an unknown disease that has hit beetle farms and pet stores.

Investigator Judit Penzes decided to find out about the disease. He toured pet stores in New Jersey and found diseased larvae at thrift stores.

Penzes came up with an extraordinary way to isolate the pathogen, which he suspected was a virus. He ground the larvae finely in an ordinary blender and then poured the mixture into a centrifuge.

In the rapidly rotating extractor, the denser virus material separated from the rest of the mass. Examination under the light of a special lamp revealed that the rover glowed blue. So it was indeed a virus.

Then this mass was further frozen and the structure of the virus could be distinguished with a very precise microscope. It is related to parvoviruses. Now researchers are developing ways to protect larvae from these bugs.

The researchers themselves jokingly refer to their beetle soup as beetlejuice. It’s not worth tasting and especially not trying at home.

Alun of course the whole pun comes from the star Betelgeuse. The red giant star looms in the upper left corner of the Orion constellation and is one of the most visible stars in the night sky in Finland as well.

The name has been mangled over the years from wrong translations of the Arabic language. The original form is yad al jawza.