Immunostimulant is a substance that can stimulate the immune system against pathogenic microbes. Natural products produced by sea cucumbers have potential to be developed as immunostimulants. This study was aimed evaluate imunostimulatory activity of Holothuria atra extract using phagocytocyte assay macrophage cells and differentiation leukocyte in rats. The samples H. were taken from Halmahera...

Apostichopus japonicus is a common sea cucumber that undergoes seasonal inactivity phases and ceases feeding during the summer months. We used this sea cucumber species as a model in which to examine phenotypic plasticity of the digestive tract in response to food deprivation. We measured the body mass, gross gut morphology and digestive enzyme activities of A. japonicus before, during, and aft...

The brown sea cucumber fishery is active in the Galapagos Islands since the year 1991 after its collapse in mainland Ecuador. This paper analyzes the Galapagos Sea cucumber fishery over the past decade and the reasons for its management pitfalls and chronic over fishing, and proposes an improved strategy for estimating stock size and harvest potential. Based on the historical distribution of th...

Calreticulin (CRT) plays crucial roles in the regulation of Ca 2+ homeostasis, immune responses and molecular chaperon. In this study, a new member of the CRT gene (denoted as AjCRT) was cloned and characterized from the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus. The full-length of the gene was of 3316 bp, which consisted of 204 bp 5’ untranslated region (UTR), 1870 bp of 3’-UTR and a putative 1242-b...

Adult neurogenesis, generation of new functional cells in the mature central nervous system (CNS), has been documented in a number of diverse organisms, ranging from humans to invertebrates. However, the origin and evolution of this phenomenon is still poorly understood for many of the key phylogenetic groups. Echinoderms are one such phylum, positioned as a sister group to chordates within the...

The sulfated polysaccharides in the body wall of the sea cucumber occur as three fractions that differ markedly in molecular mass and chemical composition. The fraction containing a high molecular mass component has a high proportion of fucose and small amounts of galactose and amino sugars, whereas another fraction contains primarily a sulfated fucan. The third fraction (F-2), which represents...