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Topic: Cone Snail

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	Cone snail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Because cone snails are slow-moving, they use a venomous harpoon (actually a toxoglossan radula) to catch fast-moving prey such as fish.
		The cone snail's harpoon is a modification of the radula, an organ in molluscs which acts as both tongue and teeth.
		Some cone snail venom contains tetrodotoxin, which is the same paralytic neurotoxin as that of the pufferfish and the blue-ringed octopus.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Cone_snail (621 words)

	Environment News Service (ENS)
		The venom of a marine cone snail found in tropical waters off the coast of Australia shows promise in relieving the most difficult form of pain to treat, new research by university and corporate scientists reveals.
		The venom of some cone snails is toxic to humans - as many as 30 people are known to have died from cone snail venom, but not all cone snail venoms are the same.
		Cone snails live in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Caribbean and Red Seas, and along the coast of Florida.
	www.ens-newswire.com /ens/jun2005/2005-06-13-02.asp (737 words)

	Of Molluscs and Men
		When the snails are close enough to their prey, most species shoot out a tiny harpoon that instantly paralyzes the prey with venom.
		Cone snails come in about 500 varieties and are found mainly in the shallow waters of coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific Oceans.
		The elegantly patterned cone snail attached to the side of the tank is inching slowly within reach of a smaller brown snail that with the flicker of the larger snail's deadly harpoon, will soon become a fine meal of escargot.
	www.mbl.edu /publications/LABNOTES/7.3/cone.html (1207 words)

	Casebook (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Marine snails may be found in the deepest parts of oceans, shallow waters of the seashore, and in tide pools.
		Cone Snail shells come in many different and beautiful colors and patterns and they are prized by collectors.
		The Volute Snail is a persistent predator, pursuing its prey aggressively.
	projects.edtech.sandi.net /dailard/snailtrail/casebook.html (2914 words)

	Cognetix (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Occurance of hydroxyproline in a toxin from the marine snail Conus geographus.
		Peptides in the venom of the geography cone, Conus geographus.
		Isolation of Lys-conopressin-G from the venom of the worm-hunting snail, Conus imperialis.
	www.cognetix.com /news_publications.asp (4884 words)

	Snails that shoot poison darts
		Some cone snail species are equipped with a veritable “ordnance depot”: a dozen of darts ready to fire in all directions, even backwards.
		Cone snails live in coastal sea areas in the temperate and tropical climate zone.
		Cone snails do not show aggressiveness towards humans and will only sting in defense when disturbed (victims are usually careless shell collectors).
	www.suite101.com /article.cfm/snails_shells/110607 (473 words)

	Natural History: Keeping up with the cones: chased by evolutionary biologists and pharmacological researchers, a ...
		The cone snail's venom must be quick-acting and extremely effective or, as with some molluscivorous species, be administered multiple times.
		As the transplanted snails grow up surrounded by prey that their parents never encountered, natural selection may favor those with toxin cocktails and feeding patterns that fit conditions in their new home; hunger would rapidly eliminate those that failed to assimilate.
		Investigations of cone snail venoms have revealed that they inhibit motor control and that the paralysis induced by a sting represents the aggregate effect of several varieties of conotoxins.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m1134/is_1_111/ai_82803331 (1466 words)

	LiveScience.com - Snail Charming Scientist a Real Conehead
		Cone snails are among the sea's most abundant creatures with more than 500 species, and are mostly found in coral reef environments in the IndoPacific region.
		He is one of the few scientists in the world who farms cone snails in his lab nestled in the northern foothills of New York's rustic Adirondack Mountains near the Canadian border.
		He gingerly picked up the snails with the forceps, lined them all up on one side of the tank and counted them to make sure none was hiding in the sand _ a potential recipe for a surprise sting.
	www.livescience.com /animalworld/cone_snails_041031.html (1163 words)

	SLTrib Utah City Guide - Home and Services - Pain relief at A snail's pace
		A cone snail, Conus geographus, envelopes a goldfish in a netlike structure before stinging it with a paralyzing compound.
		Once the brown and white cone snail realized its prey was nearby, it extended a netlike structure to envelope the goldfish.
		Other cone snails employ a harpoon strategy in paralyzing the fish first, then dragging it into the net.
	www.utahcityguide.com /home/5041.asp (1078 words)

	Snail Venom Studied as Source for New Drugs
		Cone snails inject their prey with venom to paralyze and eventually kill it.
		Cone snail venom consists of a mixture of proteins.
		Cone snail venom is also being investigated for possible treatments for brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and epilepsy, says Livett, who recently led a review of studies on cone snail venom published since 1999.
	www.webmd.com /content/article/93/102169.htm?z=1728_00000_1000_nb_01 (401 words)

	NATURE. The Venom Cure. Cone Shell Cures \| PBS
		To sense food, cone shells filter water through a tubelike organ called a siphon, awaiting a whiff of the telltale chemicals emitted by their prey.
		Indeed, cone snail venom is so powerful and painless that victims can die unaware that they've even been bitten.
		Even as cone shells show promise for medicine, however, their survival may be at stake.
	www.pbs.org /wnet/nature/venomcure/coneshell.html (507 words)

	Snails May Save Lives—If They Can Survive (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Scientists have found that cone snails can help treat human pain, as well as cancer and other illnesses.
		Cone snails live in tropical coral reefs or swamps crowded with mangrove trees.
		He is the author of the cone snail study.
	news.nationalgeographic.com /kids/2003/11/conesnails.html (324 words)

	Toxic Snail Venoms Yielding New Painkillers, Drugs (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Cone snails are found primarily in coral reefs in warm, tropical waters.
		The proven potential of drugs derived from cone snail venom is the best example of the cost associated with the loss of the world's coral reefs, Chivian said.
		Cone snails harpoon their prey with pointed tongues shaped like hypodermic needles.
	news.nationalgeographic.com /news/2005/06/0614_050614_snaildrugs.html (1063 words)

	Pain Relief from a Poison (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Remarkably, a single snail was capable of producing up to 100 unique toxins (called conotoxins)—peptide chains mostly fewer than 30 amino acids in length.
		Cone snail researchers are passionate about their subjects.
		He "milks" live snails for the toxins, then uses mass spectrometry and sequence analysis to work out the exact identity and structure of these myriad toxins.
	www.acs.org /portal/a/c/s/1/feature_pro.html?DOC=professionals\pro_snailtoxin.html (509 words)

	Growfish - Gippsland Aquaculture Industry Network (GAIN)
		Prialt is synthetically made from a naturally occurring toxin from the marine snail Conus magus, and works by blocking nerve channels in the body responsible for transmitting pain signals.
		Scientists believe cone snail venom may someday be used in pain management as an alternative to or in tandem with morphine, but without morphine's addicting side effects.
		The trick, Bingham explained, is to entice the snails to sting the fish and release their venom into the container.
	www.growfish.com.au /content.asp?contentid=2741 (1091 words)

	oldgene: University of Utah News Release: January 28, 2002
		The ancestors of humans, fruit flies and predatory, ocean-dwelling cone snails diverged onto different branches of the evolutionary tree at least 540 million years ago, so "there must have been a common reason why this enzyme was present early in all three groups," said University of Utah biology professor Baldomero "Toto" Olivera.
		Olivera and his laboratory team study cone snails - which have stung to death a few dozen human divers and swimmers around the world - because the snail venoms have potential as medicines for nervous system and cardiovascular disorders.
		The researchers so far examined eight introns associated with the same gene in cone snails, and found they are in the same location as they are in the human genetic blueprint.
	www.utah.edu /news/releases/02/jan/oldgene.html (1382 words)

	Conotoxins: a Case for their Cause of the Rapid Evolutionary Radiation of Conus
		CONE SNAIL BIOLOGY Cone snails of the genus Conus inhabit tropical waters at varying shallow depths.
		The greatest diversity of cone snails can be found in subtidal choral reefs of Thailand and Indonesia but their geographic range extends throughout the Indio-Pacific region (Kohn 1975, Olivera 1990).
		In summation, cone snails have developed a scheme for designing a variety of toxins that are very likely to be effective to their ends of prey capture.
	www.colostate.edu /Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1994/malishenko.html (2383 words)

	Poster Conus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		Cone snails (Conidae) are marine animals which contain venoms which, in the worst case, can prove fatal to human beings.
		To elucidate the question which components of the venom of this cone snail is responsible for this fast immobilization of prey, snail venom was collected and was separated by HPLC chromatography into its individual components.
		It emerged that no single component of the snail venom alone is able to induce this effective paralysis in the victim, but that at least two components are required for this.
	www.em.mpg.de /User/Terlau/Conus/Conus.html (458 words)

	ScienCentral Video News: Pain Relief Poison
		Despite its small size—only a few inches in length—predatory cone snails wield a venom weapon deadly enough to kill a human.
		Cone snail venom is just one example of toxic tinctures researchers are turning into therapeutic treatments for chronic pain.
		His recent review of cone snail venoms was published in the January 2004 issue of Physiological Reviews, and the study was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the Biofuture Prize for the German Ministry of Education and Research.
	www.sciencentral.com /articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392338 (941 words)

	Pain - Pt 5 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		But once the fish comes close enough, the cone snail launches a miniature harpoon from the proboscis and uses it to inject a cocktail of poisons.
		The cone snail then emerges from the reef floor and devours its paralyzed prey.
		His snail toxins, or conotoxins, were interesting but didn’t seem to be the sort of work to build a career on.
	www.accessexcellence.org:8080 /RC/AB/BA/pain_Meds/pain5.html (249 words)

	News: Snail toxin for treatment of nerve pain - myDNA (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
		The venom of some cone snails is toxic to humans – as many as 30 people are known to have died from cone snail envenomation.
		The cone snails that are dangerous to humans feed on fish by impaling them with a harpoon styled barb (a modified tooth called a radula) loaded with toxic venom.
		Associate Professor Gayler says the team, by using genes as the starting point, are able to minimize the number of cone snails required to develop new tools and therapies for medical research and therefore minimise the environmental impact of the research.
	www.mydna.com /health/diabetes/news/resources/news/200506/news_20050610_snail.html (890 words)

	MSN Encarta - Dictionary - cone definition
		A circular cone has a directrix that is a circle.
		There are three different types of cone cells, responding to blue, green, or red light.
		marine biology sea snail with cone-shaped shell: a sea snail with a cone-shaped, vividly marked shell and a poisonous, sometimes fatal, sting.
	encarta.msn.com /encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861599445 (350 words)

	BBC NEWS \| Science/Nature \| Drug-hope snails imperilled
		The worry is that the 500 or so species of cone snail will be all gone before science has had the chance to investigate properly the extraordinary properties of their venoms.
		To date, only about 100 of the estimated 50,000 cone snail toxins have been characterised, and a mere handful tested for their medical potential.
		The researchers tell the journal Science that cone snails should be covered immediately by Appendix 2 of Cites, which would require proper management of the trade in shells.
	news.bbc.co.uk /1/hi/sci/tech/3207632.stm (716 words)

	Clarkson University - News - Clarkson Researchers Study Venom From Poisonous Marine Snails For Promising New Drugs
		In his laboratory, Moczydlowski and his research team are working with cone snails to identify and isolate peptides from the snail's venom that might be useful in the development of new drugs.
		moczydlowski.jpg: Cone shells are prized for their beauty by shell collectors, but these marine snails are also among the most poisonous creatures on earth.
		Edward Moczydlowski, professor and chair of the Biology Department at Clarkson University, and a team of researchers are working with cone snails in the laboratory to identify and isolate peptides from the snail's venom that might be useful in the development of new drugs.
	www.clarkson.edu /news/print.php?id=636 (901 words)

	NIH Record - 10-08-96 -- Potion Shows Nervous System Function
		Some of these poisonous snails bury themselves in the sand and extend a worm-like tube from their mouths to lure nearby fish.
		Two groups of researchers are examining the use of another cone snail peptide as a diagnostic screen for Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, an autoimmune disorder triggered by lung tumors whose cells express specific calcium channels.
		The targets of the snail toxins -- ion channels and receptors -- tend to be similar among all vertebrates, suggesting that what causes a neurological response in fish will cause some response in humans.
	www.nih.gov /news/NIH-Record/10_08_96/story02.htm (883 words)

	Sea Snail Venom Yields Powerful New Painkiller, March 1, 2005 NIH Record - National Institutes of Health (NIH)
		There are about 500 different types of cone snails, and each one typically produces about 100 different toxins in its venom.
		Native to coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean, the 2-inch-long snail uses its venom to hunt fish.
		He believes — and his research supports — that the snails are a treasure trove of novel chemical compounds with the potential to be useful in the clinic or laboratory.
	www.nih.gov /nihrecord/03_01_2005/story03.htm (615 words)

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