Sea anemone ‘sting’ isolates IB4-negative sensory neurones

A new sea anemone peptide, APETx2, inhibits ASIC3, a major acid-sensitive channel in sensory neurons.

From a systematic screening of animal venoms, we isolated a new toxin (APETx2) from the sea anemone Anthopleura elegantissima, which inhibits ASIC3 homomeric channels and ASIC3-containing heteromeric channels both in heterologous expression systems and in primary cultures of rat sensory neurons. APETx2 is a 42 amino-acid peptide crosslinked by three disulfide bridges, with a structural organiza...

Inhibition of voltage - gated Na + currents in sensory neurons by the sea anemone toxin

The blastoporal organiser of a sea anemone

amygdala. Both conditioned stimuli and emotional faces produce strong amygdala activation when presented unconsciously, emphasizing the importance of the amygdala as an implicit information processor and its role in unconscious memory. Findings regarding the human amygdala are mainly at the level of the whole region rather than nuclei (Figure 6). Structural and/or functional changes in the amyg...

Rising starlet: the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis.

In recent years, a handful of model systems from the basal metazoan phylum Cnidaria have emerged to challenge long-held views on the evolution of animal complexity. The most-recent, and in many ways most-promising addition to this group is the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. The remarkable amenability of this species to laboratory manipulation has already made it a productive syste...

Clone-specific cellular recognition in a sea anemone.

A highly specific cellular recognition system, capable of distinguishing between syngeneic and allogeneic tissue, exists in Anthopleura elegantissima, a sea anemone that lives in clonal colonies and attacks foreign clones. During the attack, specialized surface protrusions (acrorhagi) are used for stinging. The recognition process was studied by presenting various tissues to the surface of infl...