Yekutieli Y, Mitelman R, Hochner B, Flash T. Analyzing octopus movements using three-dimensional reconstruction. J Neurophysiol 98: 1775–1790, 2007. First published July 11, 2007; doi:10.1152/jn.00739.2006. Octopus arms, as well as other muscular hydrostats, are characterized by a very large number of degrees of freedom and a rich motion repertoire. Over the years, several attempts have been ma...

To cope with the exceptional computational complexity that is involved in the control of its hyper-redundant arms [1], the octopus has adopted unique motor control strategies in which the central brain activates rather autonomous motor programs in the elaborated peripheral nervous system of the arms [2, 3]. How octopuses coordinate their eight long and flexible arms in locomotion is still unkno...

This study exposed 8 Enteroctopus dofleini separately to 2 unfamiliar individual humans over a 2-week period under differing circumstances. One person consistently fed the octopuses and the other touched them with a bristly stick. Each human recorded octopus body patterns, behaviors, and respiration rates directly after each treatment. At the end of 2 weeks, a body pattern (a dark Eyebar) and 2...

Whole cell patch recordings in slices show that the probability of firing of action potentials in octopus cells of the ventral cochlear nucleus depends on the dynamic properties of depolarization. Octopus cells fired only when the rate of rise of a depolarization exceeded a threshold value that varied between 5 and 15 mV/ms among cells. The threshold rate of rise was independent of whether depo...

GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) plays a pivotal role in the regulation of reproduction in vertebrates through interaction with a specific receptor. Previously, we isolated a GnRH homologue, oct-GnRH, from the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). In the present study, we have identified a GnRH receptor (oct-GnRHR) specific for oct-GnRH from Octopus brain. Oct-GnRHR includes domains and motif...

The DNA barcoding proposes the use of a particular sequence from a single genomic region as the base for an identifying system capable to determine all animal species. This methodology comprises the analysis of a 655 base-pair region from the mithocondrial cytochrome C oxidase gene (COI). Its application in the species identification of fishery products has been very promising. However, in the ...

Although the camera eye of the octopus is very similar to that of humans, phylogenetic and embryological analyses have suggested that their camera eyes have been acquired independently. It has been known as a typical example of convergent evolution. To study the molecular basis of convergent evolution of camera eyes, we conducted a comparative analysis of gene expression in octopus and human ca...

The Octopus method packages a rich set of mostly graphical object-oriented (OO) modeling techniques that facilitate the creation of abstract, well-structured models of structure and behavior along a variety of modeling perspectives. The techniques provide good tools for managing the complexity in reactive, embedded systems. On the other hand, the lack of precise semantics for the modeling notat...

MOTIVATION As alpha-helical transmembrane proteins constitute roughly 25% of a typical genome and are vital parts of many essential biological processes, structural knowledge of these proteins is necessary for increasing our understanding of such processes. Because structural knowledge of transmembrane proteins is difficult to attain experimentally, improved methods for prediction of structural...

At present, the production of merobenthic octopuses with a post-eclosion planktonic phase is a great challenge for global aquaculture. So far, juveniles from only four species have been reported to have been obtained under controlled rearing conditions: Octopus vulgaris, Octopus joubini, Enteroctopus dofleini and Robsonella fontaniana, the only Chilean species. Robsonella fontaniana (Orbigny, 1...