River lamprey

Thornhill R.A. (1972). Ultrastructure of the accessory olfactory organ in the River Lamprey (Lampetra fluviatilis). Acta Zool 53, 49-56. 

Figure 7.13 The multicontinuous G-PCS membrane system identified as a part of SER retinal pigment epithelia cells of a river lamprey, (a) Projection along the [211] (left) and the [111] (upper right) directions. The lower ri t ows an oblique section which can be understood as cut between the (211) and the (111) planes. Scale bar 1 pm. (b) Eietail of the gyroid membrane showing the four approximately parallel membranes defining 5 different spaces. Scale bv 0.5 pm. Figs, (a) and (b) are reproduced from [92], with permission.

Erythrocruorin a hemoglobin-like protein found in many invertebrates. In some snails and worms (e.g. Cirraformis) it is a high-molecular-mass (m, = 3 X10 ) extracellular respiratory pigment, consisting of 162 heme-beating polypeptide chains of M, 18,500. In sea cucumbers, mussed polychaete worms and some primitive vertebrates, like the river lamprey, it occurs as an intramuscular, low-molecular-mass protein (M, 16,700 to 56,500). 

Sediments and biota collected from the Hersey River, Michigan, in 1978, were heavily contaminated with phenanthrene, benz[a]anthracene, and benzo[a]pyrene when compared to a control site. Elevated PAH concentrations were recorded in sediments, whole insect larvae, crayfish muscle, and flesh of lampreys (family Petromyzontidae), brown trout (Salmo trutta), and white suckers (Catostomus commersoni), in that general order (Black et al. 1981). The polluted collection locale was the former site of a creosote wood preservation facility between 1902 and 1949, and, at the time of the study, received Reed City wastewater treatment plant effluent, described as an oily material with a naphthalene-like odor (Black et al. 1981). In San Francisco Bay, elevated PAH concentrations in fish livers reflected elevated sediment PAH concentrations (Stehr et al. 1997). In Chesapeake Bay, spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) collected from a PAH-contaminated tributary (up to 96 mg PAHs/kg DW sediment) had elevated cytochrome P-450 and EROD activity in liver and intestine microsomes (Van Veld et al. 1990). Intestinal P-450 activity was 80 to 100 times higher in fish from highly contaminated sites than in conspecifics from reference sites intestinal EROD activity had a similar trend. Liver P-450 and EROD activity was about 8 times higher in spot from the contaminated sites when compared to the reference sites. Liver P-450 activity correlated positively with sediment PAH, but intestinal P-450 activity seemed to reflect dietary exposure (Van Veld et al. 1990). The poor correlation between hepatic concentrations of PAHs and P-4501A is attributed to the rapid metabolism of these compounds (van der Weiden et al. 1994). 

Figure 1 Schematic of the behavior maze used to guide isolation and identification of the sea lamprey pheromone.19-27 28 Lake water mixed with a small amount of nonlamprey river water flows slowly from top to bottom at a depth of c.10cm in this two-choice maze, where preference of adult lamprey is assessed by measuring the ratio of time in the right channel to time in the left (fR/fiJ> while odor is into one side or the other.

Lampreys (stone-suckers) are anadromous migrators that live in the oceans but reproduce in freshwater rivers and lakes. Lampreys have invaded the Great Lakes of North America, where they do not have predators, and have become a plague of the fisheries there. The quantities of pheromones in the larvae are very low 8000 liters of water containing approximately 35 000 larvae yielded only 200 mg of PS,... 

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