The land helix, or snail, has been used in medicine since antiquity and prepared according to several formulations. This historical report traces the understanding of their properties from the time of Hippocrates, who proposed the use of snail mucus against protoccle and Pliny who thought that the snail increased the speed of delivery and was "a sovereign remedy to treat pain related to burns, ...

Sexual selection and sexual conflict have been shown to play key roles in the evolution of species with separate sexes. Experimental evidence is accumulating that this is also true for simultaneous hermaphrodites. For example, many species of land snails forcefully stab their mating partners with love darts. In the brown garden snail (Helix aspersa, now called Cantareus asperses), this dart inc...

The terrestrial Roman snail Helix pomatia has successfully adapted to strongly fluctuating conditions in its natural soil habitat. Part of the snail's stress defense strategy is its ability to express Metallothioneins (MTs). These are multifunctional, cysteine-rich proteins that bind and inactivate transition metal ions (Cd(2+), Zn(2+), Cu(+)) with high affinity. In Helix pomatia a Cadmium (Cd)...

In this study 160 samples of snails belonging to the species Helix aspersa maxima and Helix aspersa muller were examined for chemical and microbiological analysis. Samples came from Greece and Poland. Results showed mean concentration of cadmium (0.35±0.036 mg/kg) and lead (0.05±0.013 mg/kg) much higher than the limit of detection. Mercury levels in both species were not detected. Microbiologic...

Background: In Archaea, previous studies have revealed the presence of multiple intron-containing tRNAs and split tRNAs. The full unexpurgated analysis of archaeal tRNA genes remains a challenging task in the field of bioinformatics, because of the presence of various types of hidden tRNA genes in archaea. Here, we suggested a computational method that searched for widely separ...

We investigated the regulation of free radical metabolism in Helix aspersa snails during a cycle of 20-day estivation and 24-h arousal in summer in comparison with estivation/arousal in winter-snails. In winter-snails (J. Exp. Biol. 206, 675-685, 2003), we had already observed an increase in the selenium-dependent glutathione-peroxidase (Se-GPX) activity in foot muscle and hepatopancreas and in...

Many animals across the phylogenetic scale are routinely capable of depressing their metabolic rate to 5-15% of that at rest, remaining in this state sometimes for years. However, despite its widespread occurrence, the biochemical processes associated with metabolic depression remain obscure. We demonstrate here the development of an isolated cell model for the study of metabolic depression. Th...

We examined influence of the beta-amyloid peptide (betaAP) (25-35) neurotoxic fragment on Helix lucorum food-aversion learning. Testing with aversively conditioned carrot showed that 2, 5 and 14 days after training the betaAP-injected group responded in a significantly larger number of cases and with a significantly smaller latency than the sham-injected control group. The results demonstrate t...

ZnO nanocrystalline powder was successfully synthesized via co-precipitation method coupled with high annealing treatment. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the NPs have a pure hexagonal wurtzite structure mean crystallite size of approximately 59 nm. FESEM observations along EDS indicated formation fine particles in nanoscale regime, shape and purity. Both Raman photoluminescence charac...

Size, density and distribution of the brown garden snail (Cantareus aspersus) were observed relative to cover at a coastal reserve on the North Island, New Zealand. Cover variables depended on vegetation height and available debris (rubbish, wood, cow dung). Air temperature, ground temperature, and relative humidity were recorded continuously during the field survey for the various cover types....