Pitt, Berkeley researchers reconstruct seashells to model nervous system function

...iger, and Berkeley biophysicist George Oster to model the neural network of mollusks and design a computer program that can generate the complex patterns and sh...to the cells that produce the shell and pigmentation. They supposed that as mollusks build their shells, they retrace their previous work with the mantle and us...

Hebrew University research on octopuses sheds light on memory

...toire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates. However, they are still invertebrate mollusks with brains that contain a much fewer number of nerve cells and much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains. This unique const...

Researchers sharpen search for new marine medicines with novel techniques

...apeutic products, marine biologists and chemists have been seeking ways to identify the specific processes that produce such compounds within sponges, mollusks and other marine invertebrates. In the March issue of the journal Molecular Biosystems, the scientists describe success in using new technology called...

Hunt for Sea Delicacy Taking a Toll in California

...ver treacherously slick rocks and disappear into dark, choppy waters to pry mollusks from the ocean floor. "That's part of the fun, right? You get a little ... farm-raised abalone is served in some restaurants, the naturally harvested mollusks cannot legally be sold. Catch limits have been reduced over the years to pr...

Are Oysters Really Aphrodisiacs?

...oysters, has been vindicated by a study that proves they really are aphrodisiacs. The team of American and Italian researchers analyzed bivalve mollusks - a group of shellfish that includes oysters - and found they were rich in rare amino acids that trigger increased levels of sex hormones. The link wa...

How Many Genes Does It Take to Learn? Lessons from Sea Slugs

...ed with the mollusk genome that include many associated with neurological disorders." The findings are especially important for scientists using mollusks in experimental systems, according to Edgar Walters, Ph.D., a professor of integrative biology and pharmacology at the University of Texas Medical Sch...

mollusks in Biological News

Ocean seep mollusks may share evolutionary history with other deep-sea creatures

The unusual mollusks of oceanic cold seeps--strange clams, mussels and sea snails that thrive in the sulfur and methane-rich environments--are on average older than the marine mollusk community as a whole, according to a new report in the 8 September issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS,...

Rising acidity levels could trigger shellfish revenue declines, job losses

...hellfish that build carbonate shells or skeletons. mollusks including mussels and oysters, which support valu...tal U.S. fisheries revenue. The study assumed that mollusks harvests in the U.S. would drop 10 to 25 percent i...of predatory fish and other species that depend on mollusks for food, could lead to economic hardships for fis...

Who will pick up the bill?

... to wholesale, retail and restaurants. Ocean acidification and declining carbonate ion concentration in sea water could directly damage corals and mollusks which all depend on sufficient carbonate levels to form shells successfully. Subsequent losses of prey such as plankton and shellfish would also alter...

Mollusks taste memories to build shells

...erns of seashells using simple principles developed to explain how the brain works and how memories are stored. The "neural net" model explains how mollusks build their seashells based on the finding that the mollusk's tongue-like mantle, which overlaps the edge of the growing shell, senses or "tastes" the...

Marine scientists to assess environment before offshore drilling begins in US arctic waters

...oduced by phytoplankton in the water column sinks to the bottom, and this supports huge populations of organisms on the seabed, including crustaceans, mollusks and echinoderms, such as sea stars and sea urchins. These in turn support walrus, a diverse array of birds, humpback whales and much more. "The hu...

Queen's University biologists find new environmental threat in North American lakes

...e globe. While their work focuses on the water flea Daphnia, they note that all life in lakes requires calcium, and many creatures including crayfish, mollusks and fish have quite high calcium demands. They are all at risk, say the researchers, but we don't yet know if calcium levels have fallen to the point ...

Academy participates in project to discover drugs, biofuels in tropical seas

... new molecules and biofuels technology from marine mollusks for development in the Philippines. Research wil...s as the world's epicenter of marine biodiversity. mollusks are among the most diverse of marine animals and i...senberg, one of the study's leaders and curator of mollusks at The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia...

Brainy genes, not brawn, key to success on mussel beach

... mussels in their natural habitat, the results of which appear online Oct. 9 in the journal Current Biology . The researchers found that the hardy mollusks alternate between expressing genes associated with eating and genes associated with growing. Scientists have thought that mussels survive their har...

Discovering drugs, biofuels in tropical seas

... new molecules and biofuels technology from marine mollusks for development in the Philippines. The project w...s as the world's epicenter of marine biodiversity. mollusks are among the most diverse of marine animals and i...of the Philippines to uncover interactions between mollusks and their bacterial partners. The project is expec...

Mass. General's Warren Triennial Prize honors discoverers of microRNAs

...e target genes' RNA. The mechanism they first discovered in the roundworm C. elegans was subsequently shown to apply to animals ranging from flies to mollusks to fish to humans. It now appears that the human genome contains between 500 and 1,000 of these microRNAs, which are involved in a broad range of nor...

mollusks in Biological Definition

Blood

...g capacity. Hemoglobin is the most common respiratory protein found in nature. Hemocyanin (blue) contains copper and is used in crustaceans and mollusks . It is thought that tunicates (sea squirts) might use vanabins ( proteins containing vanadium ) for respiratory pigment (bright green, blue, o...

Brain

...ons, have notably complex brains: the arthropods (for example, insects and crustaceans ), the cephalopods ( octopuses , squid , and similar mollusks ), and craniates ( vertebrates and their cousins). The brains of arthropods and cephalopods arise from twin parallel nerve cords that extend throu...

Eye

...d field of view despite the rigid lens . In most vertebrates and some mollusks (such as octopuses ) the eye works by projecting images onto a light-sens...an humans), and the different forms of eye in, for example, vertebrates and mollusks are often cited as examples of parallel evolution . Focusing In o...

mollusks in Biological Dictionary

Typhlosole

... A typhlosole is an internal fold of the intestine or intestine inner wall. Typhlosoles occur in bivalve mollusks and some annelids, and echinoderms. Talk: Typhlosole . From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search ... Text is available ...

Trematode

... Nearly all trematodes are parasites of mollusks and vertebrates. ... Almost all trematodes infect mollusks as the first ... Main article: Trematode infection ... A diagnostic ...

Invertebrates

...es and invertebrates . ... Animal Printouts: Invertebrates ... Some major groups of invertebrates include: Porifera (sponges), jellyfish, ... mollusks are soft-bodied invertebrates . ... Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies and English movies, comic strips, activity pages an...

Coelom

...ges. Loss of coelom is correlated with reduction in body size. Coeloms are only ever present in triploblastic animals, though... Arthropods and mollusks have a reduced (but still true) coelom . ... The intraembryonic coelom is the only cavity that persists in the mammal at term, ... Aspects o...