Helix Aspersa

The Mucoproteins of the Snails, Helix Aspersa and Helix Pomatia

The problem of the structure of complex proteins containing carbohydrates in their molecule is still a subject of discussion. The fundamental questions which have been debated during the last decades and which have been the subject of many controversies are concerned with the nature of the carbohydrate group present in the molecule of these substances. Since the discovery of mucoproteins or muc...

The Evaporation of Water from Helix Aspersa

It is known that the activity of terrestrial pulmonates is connected in some way to the extensive and often rapid fluctuations in water content which are characteristic of these animals (Howes & Wells, 1934; Wells, 1944). The work of Hughes & Kerkut (1956) and Kerkut & Taylor (1956) has further shown that the activity of the pedal ganglion of slugs changes with the osmotic pressure of the bathi...

Genotoxicity of Nicotiana tabacum leaves on Helix aspersa

Tobacco farmers are routinely exposed to complex mixtures of inorganic and organic chemicals present in tobacco leaves. In this study, we examined the genotoxicity of tobacco leaves in the snail Helix aspersa as a measure of the risk to human health. DNA damage was evaluated using the micronucleus test and the Comet assay and the concentration of cytochrome P450 enzymes was estimated. Two group...

The cytology of the neurones of Helix aspersa.

Associative learning phenomena in the snail (Helix aspersa): conditioned inhibition.

Two experiments using garden snails (Helix aspersa) showed conditioned inhibition using both retardation and summation tests. Conditioned inhibition is a procedure by which a stimulus becomes a predictor of the absence of a relevant event--the unconditioned stimulus (US). Typically, conditioned inhibition consists of pairings between an initially neutral conditioned stimulus, CS(2), and an effe...