The fauna collected by MAREANO represents a wealth of different life-forms, from sea cucumbers retrieved from 3000 meters depth to small crustaceans hidden in the sediments of fishing banks. They are all adapted for the environment in which they are living. Their morphology and behavior are fine-tuned to the specific environment they are living in, and their state of health indicates environmen...

Triterpenoids are the most abundant secondary metabolites present in marine organisms, such as marine sponges, sea cucumbers, marine algae and marine-derived fungi. A large number of triterpenoids are known to exhibit cytotoxicity against a variety of tumor cells, as well as anticancer efficacy in preclinical animal models. In this review efforts have been taken to review the structural feature...

BACKGROUND The cucumber, Cucumis sativus, is one of the most widely consumed fruit vegetables the world over. The history of its dispersal to the Occident from its centre of origin, the Indian subcontinent, has been incorrectly understood for some time, due to the confusion of cucumbers with vegetable melons. Iconographic and literary evidence has shown that cucumber was absent in Roman times, ...

Abstarct: A molecular phylogenetic analysis of some Holothuroidea was undertaken in order to clarify the systematics and taxonomy of this class in the red sea. DNA sequence for portions of 16S mitochondrial genes was obtained from 4 species of sea cucumbers. The resulting molecular phylogeny using maximum likelihood methods of the Holothuroidea conflicting existing taxonomy, which is based larg...

Scuba has permitted in situ research of the early life histories of subtidal marine invertebrates, limited only by the small size of early stages. Investigators have used scuba to observe, among other things, coral spawning, including the spectacular mass spawns on the Great Barrier Reef, which established that most corals are hermaphroditic broadcast spawners. Observations and experiments have...

This study describes temporal and spatial abundance patterns of echinoderm larvae in La Parguera, Puerto Rico. For the temporal study, larvae were sampled by a series of monthly tows taken with a 64 microm mesh net between the new and full moon from April 2005 to July 2006, September 2006 and August 2007. In order to measure spatial variation of echinoderm larval abundances, oblique tows were t...

The midgut environment of anopheline mosquitoes plays an important role in the development of the malaria parasite. Using genetic manipulation of anopheline mosquitoes to change the environment in the mosquito midgut may inhibit development of the malaria parasite, thus blocking malaria transmission. Here we generate transgenic Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes that express the C-type lectin CEL-I...