Here's an article about, well... it has to do with.....

Look! A new member just joined TONMO.com!!

[/runs away, leaving behind a link]

Cloning of Octopus cephalotocin receptor, a member of the oxytocin/vasopressin superfamily (http://journals.endocrinology.org/joe/fca/JOE05430.htm)

Feb 8 2004 EDIT: updated subject name per Tani's request :)

Ummmmmmmmmm :goofysca:

What language was that in?

oooopops, another new member ..... gotta go

im just replying to your topic, i haven't read the link yet, but are you referring to octo cloning???

Dudes,

Actually, this article rocks! This is astouding news! Essentially, you have a cloned cell or cells (actually, probably grown in a culture medium), that apparently shows reception of certain neurotransmitters thought to be found only in vertebrates. The Xenopus of which they speak is probably Xenopus laevis or Xenopus mullieri which are species of African clawed frogs.

Oh, and cDNA are strong, cloned copies of messenger RNA, which is the messenger element of DNA that helps in the coding of proteins.

The fact that there are receptors mean that the DNA of these octos has a region that codes for the given neurotransmitters. Since neurotransmitters affect behavior, the production of this transmitter may indicate an affinity for behavior or explain certain behaviors questioned by scientists. It also helps us crack their genetic code.

Basically, regions of DNA code for proteins, or polypeptides, as the case may be. These regions of DNA code for the same polypeptide, no matter the species.

Sweet giant anteater of Santa Anita! This goes way beyond convergent evolution! This means that cephalopods are utilizing more neurotransmitters than previously thought! I need this article....

Thanks for the heads up!

Sushi and Sake!

John

Oh, and just in case you were wondering:

The article mentioned Cl- and Ca2+ ions... My guess is that they meant the use of ionic "pumps" (changes of concentration of ions across a cell membrane) to move action potentials (think of a nerve firing) from one neuron to the next.

Very cool article.

John

[poking head out from the Introduce Yourself forum]

I knew someone would find this article useful! :heee: Let us know if anyone purchases it. Obviously it wouldn't be permissable to reproduce the article here, but sounds like good fodder for discussion.

John, I think I almost nearly followed your post after a couple of reads. Honestly, I think I would have taken all of this for granted. I mean, how else would an octopus brain be expected to work? A question; do octopuses have synapses (or does this article now imply that they do)?

Regardless of that, I follow you re: convergent evolution. I'm still pretty baffled at how our eyes can be so similar, although we followed totally different paths.

And from what I gather, there's a giant anteater in Santa Anita! Someone better tell the ants! :P

Tony,

I would say yes, cephs do have the same structures (axons, synapses, terminals and receptors, etc.) that any animal with a brain has. And the giant cranial nerves in cephs are pretty much the same in function and structure as ours.

I guess that what makes this situation interesting is that someone is actually isolating the ceph neurochemistry. This can give us a lot of insight into their behavior, and their genetic code.

Well, if I were an endocrinologist, I would buy this article, but I think a lot of it would beat me into a pulp. Or "pulpo"... hee hee.... sorry, Spanish octopus joke there... :lol:

Sushi and sake,

John

John,

This article lies far outside my understanding, but I wonder if it might be relevant to one outstanding Architeuthis mystery, namely the presence of enzymes in the axons which appear capable of neutralizing toxic nerve agents. Could the results reported in Japan have any bearing on that?

:?:

Clem

:shock: :P :shock: :?: :bonk: ok i just started studying the way the brain works in college, Im not ready for this yet :wink: :bonk:

:shock: :P :shock: :?: :bonk: ok i just started studying the way the brain works in college, Im not ready for this yet :wink: :bonk:

dbbga,

The brain works in college? :wink:

:grad:

(Icon above depicts Clem moments before his brain took a stroll)

LMAO that was funny,,, okok its been 20yrs since ive been in school, so im not great at it ,,,,yet, but soon,, very soon :twisted:

Hee hee! Good one!

Seriously though, I don't think that the chems in question were exactly dealing with neurotoxin antivenom, BUT you never know.

Really? Archis are immune to certain neurotoxins? Okay, well, you know WHY this would be, right? It means either their prey or their predators at one time or another could have been venomous! Amazing!

Well, neurotoxins work by bonding to active sites and inhibiting the action potential at the synapse by bonding to receptor sites thus stopping or changing the given action potential. Sweet, huh?

John

Well, neurotoxins work by bonding to active sites and inhibiting the action potential at the synapse by bonding to receptor sites thus stopping or changing the given action potential. Sweet, huh?

John
:sleeping: ....oh yes of course whatever you say, sorry this lecture seem's a tad boring... :lol: ,i was starting to drool, and might i add that i study this stuff during daylight hours in my uni, why should i need to spend my leisure time reading tech stuff on ceph's on here anyway's :lol: ?

Yeah... :oops:

Point well taken. I tend to get overzealous when I find a thread that sparks my interest. I loved comparative psych. and always tend to get really excited about these sorts of things. Honestly speaking, maybe I get too excited for my own good.

Sushi and Sake,

John

Yeah... :oops:

Point well taken. I tend to get overzealous when I find a thread that sparks my interest. I loved comparative psych. and always tend to get really excited about these sorts of things. Honestly speaking, maybe I get too excited for my own good.

Sushi and Sake,

John

Me too ..... you're in good company John. It's just that this one went right over my head. Right now I'm buzzing over comparative squid hook morphology. Not really the sort of thing any 'normal' person would be thinking about over a bottle of red on a Sunday night .... but the sort of thing that keeps me awake into the early hours, itching to get back beneath the microscope and learn more.

Just how many times was Spike Milligan intitutionalised?
Cheers
O

Yeah, me too -- by all means don't stop posting, that's the idea here, right? Otherwise it'd be REALLY boring... :sleeping: :sleeping:

Hi Steve,

Uh, I have to admit my ignorace here, but who is Spike Milligan?

Sushi and Sake,

John

hehehehe a genius!!!!!!!!!

The godfather of alternative comedy

Not to get off the subject but how long do you think it will take me to make more posts than colin? I bet I pass him by the end of the week!

I can do 800 posts this week!

muahahahaha

:twisted:

Avast ye, Cortum!

Spam is akin to piracy on the high seas! Arrrgh! :mrgreen:

Sushi and Sake... now THAT'S AMORE!!

John

Spam is akin to piracy on the high seas! Arrrgh! :mrgreen:


Except spammers dont usually have a parrot on their shoulder


One Scurvy Scallawag,
WK

Uh, I have to admit my ignorace here, but who is Spike Milligan?


Oh deary me, John, you mean to say you've never heard of the Goons? :shock:

you should look out some old recordings "I'm walking backward for christmas (across the irish sea)" and the "ying tong song" are classics!

as for Oxy whosis etc I once got an A in Neuropsych and then promptly tried to forget it all!!!! But on reading that article it all came back to haunt me :goofysca:

J

Spam is akin to piracy on the high seas! Arrrgh! :mrgreen:

Except spammers dont usually have a parrot on their shoulder

:P :P :P :P

Related story here:

Squid research at summer science retreat unlocking mysteries of the brain (http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2003/08/23/squid_research_at_summer_science_retreat _unlocking_mysteries_of_the_brain/)

Those guys better be careful...if they drink and eat the squids they are working on, they might get "mad squid disease"!!!! :shock:
by the bye, I find neurotoxins every bit as fascinating as get out...had been working with a doctor here in Glendale seperating out components of tiger rattlesnakes and montane mexican rattlesnakes...cool stuff! Nothing prettier than a chromatograph reading at 2 a.m.!
Greg

I think it's high time we reactivated (and maybe renamed :P ) this thread, because there are lots of very timely issues here.

I hope we can get back to the link Tony posted, re Alzheimer's research, but in the meantime I wanted to share something that I was reminded of after hearing about the recent ricin scare in Washington, DC. While I don't know if ricin is a neurotoxin or a cardiotoxin, the news story struck a chord with me and I ran to get my copy of Ellis' SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID, which I read in 1998, the year it was published.

Sure enough, I found the following reference. Please forgive the length, but I didn't want to take a chance of leaving out anything that might be essential to the scientific facts:

Woods Hole biochemist Francis C.G. Hoskin has been working on a rather unusual aspect of squid neurology. He has discovered that the nerves of cephalopods contain an enzyme that can destroy and thus render harmless a group of compounds that the popular press refers to as "nerve gases," extremely toxic because they poison an enzyme that is essential to nerve function. (Nerve gases, which include sarin, the culprit in the 1996 Tokyo subway deaths, are actually liquids, but they do have vapor pressures, and are therefore commonly known as gases.) In 1965, Hoskin and his colleagues thought that since the squid's giant axon does not have the insulating layer of myelin with which our own -- and most other -- nerves are wrapped, they could use these axons to test the effects of certain poison gases on nerve functions. When they subjected the axons to nerve gases, they were astonished to observe that something in the axon totally neutralized the effects of the gas.

The answer to the obvious question of why a squid, whose ancestors developed perhaps half a billion years ago, should maintain a defense mechanism against a substance that was first manufactured in 1854 is not so simple, but it fits well within current evolutionary theory. Generic modifications are not "designed" to resolve particular problems (birds and insects did not evolve wings because they needed to fly), but rather, existing or developing modifications were appropriated for eventually advantageous purposes. It is believed that feathers developed from modified scales that were used for thermoregulation, and were later employed for flying. The squid developed this unusual (and unexpected) immunity to nerve gas, but as Hoskin wrote, "Perhaps the nerve-gas-detoxifying enzyme is really there for some simple, well-known purpose that we have missed, but this seems unlikely in view of the specificity of enzyme reactions." In cephalopod nerves, half the chloride content has been replaced with an ion called isethionate, an alcohol molecule with sulfonic acid at one end. Hoskin speculated that the squid might actually produce a nerve gas-like substance to down-regulate its own nerve function, and then the nerve gas-detoxifying enzyme is part of that regulatory mechanism.

Just as the squid axon turned out to be extremely useful in neurological research, so also might this enzyme be helpful to mankind. "In a more immediately practical content," wrote Hoskin in 1990 (before sarin was actually used in Tokyo), "it seems reassuing that environmentally hazardous compounds such as nerve gases and insecticides may be detoxified by an enzyme found in the squid. Although such a relatively limited source is probably not practical for large-scale detoxifications, the potential exists for accomplishing this by a combination of genetic manipulation and biochemical engineering."

-- Richard Ellis, THE SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID, final paragraphs of chapter entitled "The Biology of Squids"

IMHO, if such research continues, it may have major implications in the fight against the use of chemical weapons in war and terrorism. That would, so to speak, thrust our friend the Archi (or even the humble Loligo) into the forefront of current events, and teuthologists would -- finally -- receive a plethora of much-needed grants, and much-deserved recognition by a vast spectrum of the lay public.

Steve-O and Kat, are you personally involved in any of this research? If not, do you know if it is presently being continued by any other teuthologists? This is important stuff, and governments need to realize that funds must be allocated towards it.

Let's discuss this (and the other area of research mentioned above) more, if possible! Anyone interested?

Tani

Steve-O and Kat, are you personally involved in any of this research? If not, do you know if it is presently being continued by any other teuthologists? This is important stuff, and governments need to realize that funds must be allocated towards it.
Great post T, so very good to have you back! How astute of you to pull this current event reference out of Ellis' book from '98. Am interested in the answers, myself. Will promote in today's Newsletter, thanks!

I discussed this article with my physiology instructor today. He would like to read it, mostly since he's a bat person rather than a squiddy like us. Can anyone send me a link to the original paper?

Does that mean that Homeland Security is now going to classify the Archituethis as a terrorist? :P

Sushi and Fugu (Hold the tetrodotoxins, please),

John