Perfused eel livers, isolated eel hepatocytes, and cultured eel hepatocytes are used to investigate eel liver functions such as gluconeogenesis, glycogen synthesis, and lipoprotein synthesis and methods for preparation are described. A novel phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) synthesis pathway from pyruvate in gluconeogenesis in eel liver was elucidated and PEP synthesis pathways in eel, rat, and pigeon...

The European eel (Anguilla anguilla) presents a blockade of sexual maturation at a prepubertal stage due to a deficient production of gonadotropins. We previously initiated, in the eel, the investigation of the kisspeptin system, one of the major gatekeepers of puberty in mammals, and we predicted the sequence of two Kiss genes. In the present study, we cloned and sequenced Kiss1 and Kiss2 cDNA...

The European eel is a euryhaline teleost which has been shown to differentially up- and downregulate aquaporin (AQP) water channels in response to changes in environmental salinity. We have characterized the transport properties of four aquaporins localized to osmoregulatory organs - gill, esophagus, intestine and kidney. By sequence comparison these four AQP orthologs resemble human AQP1 (eel ...

Freshwater eels are important animals because they have a unique catadromous life history and are used as food resources. European, American and Japanese eel populations now are considered to be outside the safe biological limits and are seriously threatened with extinction. Therefore, the European eel was recently categorised as critically endangered by the European Union and the United Nation...

The effect of commercial fisheries on nontarget species is a burgeoning issue for both fishery managers and estuarine biologists. We documented diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) bycatch in cloth-funnel eel pots used in a Maryland (United States) commercial American eel (Anguilla rostrata) fishery. Between 1992 and 2001, we obtained 40 male and 9 female terrapin captures and 1 male terr...

Four somatostatin-related peptides were isolated from eel guts. Two of them were the same as eel SS-25II (eSS-25II) and eel SS-25I (eSS-25I) isolated from European eel pancreas. The remaining two peptides were C-terminal tetradecapeptides (eSS-14II and eSS-14I) of eSS-25II and eSS-25I, respectively. These four peptides all enhanced the serosa-negative transepithelial potential difference and sh...

Glass eel abundances are declining worldwide. This has mostly been attributed to direct impacts of human activities such as overfishing or habitat loss and degradation, whilst the potential influence of changes in oceanic conditions has received less attention. Eel are characterized by a complex and still enigmatic life cycle that includes a trans-oceanic spawning and larval migration. The appa...