Demania Palytoxin

Alcala, A.C., Alcala, L.C., Garth, IS., Yasumura, D., and Yasumoto, T. 1988. Human fatality due to ingestion of the crab Demania reynaudii that contained a palytoxin-like toxin. Toxicon 28(1) 105-107. 

Thin-layer chromatography can be used both for detection of palytoxin as well as in homogeneity examinations of extracted palytoxin [11,99,104]. Beress et al. [11] have used silica gel plates developed with pyridine-water-n-butanol-acetic acid in the ratio 10 12 15 13, and the toxin was stained purple with ninhydrin in ethanol with an Rf of 0.55, while Habermann et al. [104] used the same solvent mixture with cellulose plates and observed two close ninhydrin positive spots (Rf 0.67 for the major and Rf 0.75 for the minor spot). In another work [33] comparing pure palytoxin with toxins extracted from the crabs L. pictor and Demania alcalai, TEC was carried out on Silica gel 60 and NH2F254S plates with two different solvent systems (A) pyridine-water-n-butanol-acetic acid (10 12 15 13) and (B) 1-pentanol-pyridine-water (7 7 6). The toxin on the silica gel plates... 

---