Carnivorous snails

In the order Muricidae these carnivorous snails attack molluscs or sessile crustaceans by boring holes in their shells using softening secretions. Hypobranchial and other glands contain small molecular weight substances with pharmacological activity (e.g., murexine, 5HT, etc.). 

Com shell is carnivorous snail belongs to the world s largest genus of marine invertebrates (Conus) under the phylum of mollusks (Bingham et al., 2010). Com shell species are able to secrete venom, which contains com shell toxins (conotoxins) of bioactive peptides called as conopeptides (Layer and McIntosh, 2006). Different structural classes of... 

Plutonium levels in marine invertebrates generally exceed the levels observed in marine vertebrates. Marine benthic invertebrates and those invertebrate predators feeding on benthic organisms have the highest levels of Pu. Noshkin et al. (57) found the moon shell, a carnivorous snail that feeds on other... 

The cone snails from all marine environments (Phylum Mollusca, Class Gastropoda, Order Sorbeoconcha) represent a large genus of approximately 700 carnivorous predator species (Figure 6). They are classified... 

A dangerous snail. Cone snails are carnivores that inject a powerful set of toxins into their prey, leading to rapid paralysis. Many of these toxins are found to bind to specific ion-channel proteins. Why are such molecules so toxic How might such toxins be useful for biochemical studies ... 

Note Ziconotide is a synthetic analog of a substance isolated from the venom of carnivorous oceanic snails that sting their prey with a cocktail of neurotoxins injected through a harpoon-like tube. Ziconotide is 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than morphine. 

Mollusks (edible snail, slug) contain similar amounts of sodium (4 g kg DM). The rules governing the incorporation of sodium in insects and mollusks are not well known. In contrast to insects and mollusks, mammals (mice, voles, shrews) contain between 5.4 and 6.0 g kg DM of sodium. These differences are insignificant as the sodium intake of herbivores (mice, vole) differs from that of carnivores (shrews) in line with the sodium content of their feed. 

This compotmd, discovered in 1979, is in Phase III clinical trials, and a request for NDA approval submitted in 1999 was granted on 28th June 2000. On 28th December 2004, the FDA approved Prialt for the treatment of chronic pain by intrathecal injection. It is a very powerful analgesic (painkiller), approximately a thousand-fold more effective than morphine, but does not provoke any dependence effects. It was extracted from the venom of the mollusk Conus magus, collected in the Philippines. These cones are carnivorous sea snails that kill their prey (fish, moUusks and worms) by means of a very sophisticated system that is a true natural blowpipe. The microscopic arrows launched by the mollusk are coated with very powerful venoms, of which there are two principal types, a- and / -conotoxin. 

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