I think it's high time we reactivated (and maybe renamed :P ) this thread, because there are lots of very timely issues here.
I hope we can get back to the link Tony posted, re Alzheimer's research, but in the meantime I wanted to share something that I was reminded of after hearing about the recent ricin scare in Washington, DC. While I don't know if ricin is a neurotoxin or a cardiotoxin, the news story struck a chord with me and I ran to get my copy of Ellis' SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID, which I read in 1998, the year it was published.
Sure enough, I found the following reference. Please forgive the length, but I didn't want to take a chance of leaving out anything that might be essential to the scientific facts:
- Woods Hole biochemist Francis C.G. Hoskin has been working on a rather unusual aspect of squid neurology. He has discovered that the nerves of cephalopods contain an enzyme that can destroy and thus render harmless a group of compounds that the popular press refers to as "nerve gases," extremely toxic because they poison an enzyme that is essential to nerve function. (Nerve gases, which include sarin, the culprit in the 1996 Tokyo subway deaths, are actually liquids, but they do have vapor pressures, and are therefore commonly known as gases.) In 1965, Hoskin and his colleagues thought that since the squid's giant axon does not have the insulating layer of myelin with which our own -- and most other -- nerves are wrapped, they could use these axons to test the effects of certain poison gases on nerve functions. When they subjected the axons to nerve gases, they were astonished to observe that something in the axon totally neutralized the effects of the gas.
The answer to the obvious question of why a squid, whose ancestors developed perhaps half a billion years ago, should maintain a defense mechanism against a substance that was first manufactured in 1854 is not so simple, but it fits well within current evolutionary theory. Generic modifications are not "designed" to resolve particular problems (birds and insects did not evolve wings because they needed to fly), but rather, existing or developing modifications were appropriated for eventually advantageous purposes. It is believed that feathers developed from modified scales that were used for thermoregulation, and were later employed for flying. The squid developed this unusual (and unexpected) immunity to nerve gas, but as Hoskin wrote, "Perhaps the nerve-gas-detoxifying enzyme is really there for some simple, well-known purpose that we have missed, but this seems unlikely in view of the specificity of enzyme reactions." In cephalopod nerves, half the chloride content has been replaced with an ion called isethionate, an alcohol molecule with sulfonic acid at one end. Hoskin speculated that the squid might actually produce a nerve gas-like substance to down-regulate its own nerve function, and then the nerve gas-detoxifying enzyme is part of that regulatory mechanism.
Just as the squid axon turned out to be extremely useful in neurological research, so also might this enzyme be helpful to mankind. "In a more immediately practical content," wrote Hoskin in 1990 (before sarin was actually used in Tokyo), "it seems reassuing that environmentally hazardous compounds such as nerve gases and insecticides may be detoxified by an enzyme found in the squid. Although such a relatively limited source is probably not practical for large-scale detoxifications, the potential exists for accomplishing this by a combination of genetic manipulation and biochemical engineering."
-- Richard Ellis, THE SEARCH FOR THE GIANT SQUID, final paragraphs of chapter entitled "The Biology of Squids"
IMHO, if such research continues, it may have major implications in the fight against the use of chemical weapons in war and terrorism. That would, so to speak, thrust our friend the Archi (or even the humble Loligo) into the forefront of current events, and teuthologists would -- finally -- receive a plethora of much-needed grants, and much-deserved recognition by a vast spectrum of the lay public.
Steve-O and Kat, are you personally involved in any of this research? If not, do you know if it is presently being continued by any other teuthologists? This is important stuff, and governments need to realize that funds must be allocated towards it.
Let's discuss this (and the other area of research mentioned above) more, if possible! Anyone interested?
Tani