known by the Maori name, paua) belongs to an ancient morphologically conservative group, the Archaeogastropoda (Andrews, 1988). Blood concentrations of the oxygentransporting protein haemocyanin (Hc) show remarkably high individual variability in Haliotis species (Pilson, 1965; Ainslie, 1980a) (H. H. Taylor and J. E. Taylor, unpublished data for H. iris). Nevertheless, oxygen-binding studies su...

The existence of multiple independently derived populations in landlocked marine lakes provides an opportunity for fundamental research into the role of isolation in population divergence and speciation in marine taxa. Marine lakes are landlocked water bodies that maintain a marine character through narrow submarine connections to the sea and could be regarded as the marine equivalents of terre...

Nereis diversicolor, a marine worm, is unique in its ability to survive in high concentrations of cadmium that would be lethal to other organisms. Investigation into this characteristic led to the discovery of metalloprotein II (MPII), a member of the myohemerythrin family. The affinity of MPII for cadmium makes it unique among the myohemerythrins, which normally bind iron. MPII is thus an inte...

Ragworms Nereis diversicolor live in burrows which, if deeper than 5 to 10 cm, offer a safe refuge from most of their predators. Burrow depth must be ca 15 cm before they live out of reach of all predators. Burrow depth increases with body slze, levelling off at ca 15 cm, when the depth refuge is reached. Worms live at greater depths in sand than In mud, but this effect disappears if worms with...

Hemocyanins (Hcs) of arthropods and mollusks function not only as oxygen transporters, but also as phenoloxidases (POs). In invertebrates, PO is an important component in the innate immune cascade, where it functions as the initiator of melanin synthesis, a pigment involved in encapsulating and killing of pathogenic microbes. Although structures of Hc from several species of invertebrates have ...

There is increasing concern about the toxicities and potential risks, both still poorly understood, of silver nanoparticles for the aquatic environment after their eventual release via wastewater discharges. In this study, the toxicities of sediment associated nano (<100 nm)-, micron (2-3.5 μm)- and ionic (AgNO(3))-Ag on the sediment-dwelling polychaete, Nereis diversicolor, were compared after...

We present here the description of genes coding for molluscan hemocyanins. Two distantly related mollusks, Haliotis tuberculata and Octopus dofleini, were studied. The typical architecture of a molluscan hemocyanin subunit, which is a string of seven or eight globular functional units (FUs, designated a to h, about 50 kDa each), is reflected by the gene organization: a series of eight structura...

Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 19, No. 6, June 2013 1021 2. Derby HA, Hammer BW. Bacteriology of butter. IV. Bacteriological studies on surface taint butter. Iowa Agric Exp Station Res Bull. 1931;145:387–416. 3. Holt HM, Gahrn-Hansen B, Bruun B. Shewanella algae and Shewanella putrefaciens: clinical and microbiological characteristics. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2005;11:347–5...