Keith Devens .com

The glassy sponge, nicknamed the "Venus flower basket," grows the flexible fibers at cold temperatures using natural materials, a process materials scientists hope to duplicate in order to avoid the problems created by current fiber optic manufacturing methods that require high temperatures and produce relatively brittle cable.

The sponge also is able to add traces of sodium to the fibers which increase their ability to conduct light, something that cannot be done to glass fibers at the high temperatures needed for commercial manufacturing, Aizenberg said.

"We can draw it on paper and think about engineering it but we're in the stone age compared to nature," she said.

Biomimetics has driven a form of "bioprospecting" in the ocean, said Randy Kochevar, a marine biologist at the Monterey Aquarium in California.

"Folks involved in industry or medicine or biotechnology go out and look for compounds of interest in the deep sea, and it's so novel and so untapped there is a great deal of interest," Kochevar said.

Discoveries in recent years include an enzyme that improves laundry detergent, taken from bacteria that breaks down fats in cold water; a glowing protein from jellyfish that allows surgeons to illuminate cancerous tissue while they operate to remove it; and another enzyme that improves DNA testing, drawn from bacteria that live near hydrothermal vents at the ocean bottom.