Mauve Stinger may not conjure up the intense terror of Wind Viper or Fire Dragon--names of marauding Viking ships--but for the victims along the coast of Northern Ireland the night of November 21, 2007 the devastation was equal to any inflicted by the dread Norsemen of the Dark Ages. Billions of Pelagia noctiluca comprising an enormous 10-square-mile armada 35 feet deep executed an unprecedented attack on a salmon farm north of Belfast. Within seven hours the entire population of 120,000 salmon worth $2 million were stung to death. Pelagia (open ocean) noctiluca (glowing at night) is the scientific name of the mauve stinger, a jellyfish noted for the nocturnal pulsating purplish glow it uses to attract prey. Until recently, such jellyfish were unknown in the cold waters of the North Sea. As the oceans are overfished, the population of jellyfish has exploded filling empty niches worldwide. Pushed northward with warmer jet currents resulting from global warming, Pelagia noctiluca are now terrorizing tourists on beaches from Northern Africa to Norway.
Related Record from CAplus
18: 2824 Effect of ions on the luminescence and pulsations in Pelagia noctiluca. Heymans, C.; Moore, A. R. Comptes Rendus des Seances de la Societe de Biologie et de Ses Filiales 1923, 89 430-2. The Ca and K of the sea water are indispensable to call forth pulsation of the umbrella and the conduction of the excitation of luminescence. In their absence the nervous tissue ceases to function normally. Mg exerts an inhibiting effect and its removal accelerates the pulsations and increases the luminescence. Also, the H ion exerts an inhibitory, and OH ions a strong stimulating influence on the luminescence. The temp. coeff. of the luminescence reaction in vitro is about 2.18 for 10o, which does not correspond to the cytolytic coeff. (200).
48: 58022 Pigmentation of the jellyfish, Pelagia noctiluca var. panopyra. Fox, D. L.; Millott, N. Univ. of California, La Jolla, Proc. Roy. Soc. (London) 1954, B142 392-408. This jellyfish contains pigments with absorption max. (m): blue from gonadial endoderm and gastric filaments 632.5, 590, and 560; blue from the exumbrella 543-550; blue from the lips 537-547; magenta from mesogloea 490-498. A brown pigment occurs in the ectoderm of the exumbrella, the gonads, and mesogloea. The blues are intracellular, the magenta extracellular, the brown both intra and extracellular. The absorption max. of the magenta and of the blue from the gonads were shifted toward shorter wave lengths by autolysis or by hydrolysis by alkali or by trypsin. The magenta pigment apparently is a chromoprotein; its chromogen, produced by tryptic digestion, has an absorption max. 380 m, is dissolved, oxidized, and reduced with difficulty, reduces ammoniacal AgNO3 in the dark, contains Cl, org. N, a substituted phenol group, a pyrrole group, and an indole nucleus, but no protein, a-amino acids, S, or P, and apparently is a melanoid. Active tyrosinase was not found.
83: 5600 Chemical nature of bioluminescence systems in coelenterates. Shimomura, Osamu; Johnson, Frank H. Dep. Biol., Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ, USA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 1975, 72(4), 1546-9 (Eng). Anal. of substances involved in light-emitting reactions among bioluminescent coelenterates revealed a pronounced uniformity in the structural features of initial reactants, i.e., luciferins and photoprotein chromophores, as well as the light-emitter product. This product is structurally identical among the different classes of coelenterates; i.e., Hydrozoa (the jellyfish, Aequorea), Anthozoa (the sea cactus, Cavernularia; sea pansy, Renilla; and sea pen, Leioptilus), and very likely also the Scyphozoa (the jellyfish, Pelagia). In each of these instances the reaction product, 2-(p-hydroxyphenylacetyl)amino-3-benzyl-5-(p-hydroxyphenyl) pyrazine, is the actual light-emitter, whether it occurs in a Ca2+ triggered photoprotein type of luminescence or in a luciferin-luciferase type... The evidence indicates that in certain coelenterates, e.g., Cavernularia, these 2 types are equally significant, whereas in others (Renilla and Leioptilus) the luciferin-luciferase type predominates over the Ca-triggerable photoprotein type. Only the photoprotein type functions in the luciferaseless jellyfish, Aequorea. In all instances investigated, the structure of the light-emitter prior to the luminescence reaction appears to be essentially the same as that of the chromophore of unreacted aequorin. The product of the luminescence reaction is absent in exts. of nonluminous species. However, a product very similar to that of lumine...
Related Structure from CAS REGISTRY
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Coelenteramide (the actual light-emitter in
certain types of marine bioluminescence)CAS Registry Number: 50611-86-4
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Updated: 1/26/2009 2:18:35 PM
