Blue coral snake, calliophis bivirgata: A mysterious beauty armed with exotic toxins

Date: September 5, 2016

Source: University of Malaya

Toxicologists in Malaysia published the first report on the venom proteome correlating toxic functionalities of the Malayan blue coral snake, an exotic species from the country. The toxins are unique among snakes and have deep implication on antivenom production and drug discovery.

People first heard about "coral snakes" might naturally think that the snakes live in the sea, hiding, swimming and lurking in and around some beautiful coral reefs. But the truth isn't so, as coral snakes are totally terrestrial (living on land), preferring forested habitat that offers land for burrowing and hiding. Why "coral"? Because of the stunning, breathtaking colors in most of the species.

The Malayan Blue coral snake, Calliophis bivirgata, is perhaps the largest species of its kind. Adult snakes typically grow beyond a meter in body length. The body color is striking to the eyes: bright-red color on the head continuous throughout the underside of the body to the tail, while the back of the body is dark blue to black in color, flanked by a pair of bluish white stripes running along each side. The dramatic body color is believed to serve aposematic purpose (as a warning message of "Stay away from me, I am deadly!" to ward off predators). Coral snakes are elusive and shy; when confronted, they usually slither away or seek hiding spot to avoid the source of aggression.

Beautiful, attractive, but dangerous -- this is the nature of blue coral snake. All coral snakes belong to the Elapidae Family of the Serpentes Order. For those uncertain about snake taxonomy, "famous" members in the Elapidae Family include cobras, kraits and sea snakes. A common characteristic of these snakes is that they all pack and carry a battery of lethal toxins called "venom" in specialized oral glands, to be injected through the venom fangs when in need. So what is exactly "venom"? For snakes, it is a critical phenotype that has ecological significance, where it functions to take down prey and to defend the snake from predator. Mishaps however can occur from unpleasant encounters between humans and the snake, resulting in snakebite envenomation.

Continued 

Invasive Mussel Not Harmed by Toxins, Invades Freshwaters of Europe, North America

Oct. 3, 2013 — While most freshwater mussels react stressfully and weaken when exposed to the toxins in blue-green algae in their water environment, the little zebra mussel is rather indifferent. It is not affected by the toxins, and this helps it outmatch stressed and weakened mussels, report researchers from the University of Southern Denmark. This is bad for the biodiversity, and in some countries the superior zebra mussels imposes great costs to the industry.

At first glance it looks like good news: Researchers have discovered that the freshwater zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) is not damaged from exposure to toxins from blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) and other toxic substances that could constitute a problem for freshwater mussels. On the contrary, they seem completely unaffected and thus they manage significantly better in a water environment than other freshwater mussels -- and this is what worries the scientists: Many places in Europe the zebra mussels have already outmatched other mussel species and in the U.S. they are so widespread that they pose a threat.

"Zebra mussels live in large colonies in the Great Lakes in the United States, and they are a huge problem. They need something hard to attach themselves to and often they find a suitable surface on the inside of the pipes carrying water from the Great Lakes into factories and other industries along the lake. Often they sit so close that they block the water intake," explains associate professor Claudia Wiegand, who studies environmental stress physiology and aquatic toxicology at the Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark.

Efforts to prevent the zebra mussels from attaching themselves to the pipes and remove those attached have already cost several million dollars.

Read on

New calf born to Washington/Vancouver orca pod

Commemorates 1970 capture and killing of 12 orca - Written by Sandra Pollard, Freeland, Whidbey Island

September 2012. In the same week as the 8th August, 1970 Penn Cove capture commemoration was held on Whidbey Island, Washington State, to remember the seven southern resident killer whales captured and sent to marine parks around the world, and the 5 that died during the operation, the now endangered southern resident orcas embraced the arrival of a new calf, J49, bringing the population to 86.

The mother is 11-year old J37 (Hy'Shqa), daughter of J14 (Samish), one of the first calves documented from birth by Canadian biologist, Mike Bigg, who introduced the pioneering photo-identification study of killer whales in the early 70's. J49's great-great-grandmother is J2 (Granny), believed to be 101-years old and the oldest member of the southern resident community.

Only 40% chance of survival due to toxins
Although the calf only has a 40% chance of survival due to toxins (PCB's and PBDE's) being offloaded in the mother's milk, hopes and wishes are running high for a long, healthy future for J49.

Endangered species - 58 killed or captured in 1960s - 1970s
The southern residents were placed on the endangered species list in November 2005. During the capture era of the 60's and 70's, 45 were taken for marine parks and 13 killed. A mother and four calves died in the Penn Cove capture when all three pods were driven into the cove using aircraft, speeding boats and seal bombs. Forty-two years later, the only surviving southern resident from the capture era is Lolita. She is still at the Miami Seaquarium, where she continues to perform twice a day. Efforts continue to be made for her release and retirement to a sea pen in her home waters around the San Juan Islands.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/washington-orca.html#cr

Today's Environment Influences Behavior Generations Later: Chemical Exposure Raises Descendants' Sensitivity to Stress

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2012) — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Washington State University have seen an increased reaction to stress in animals whose ancestors were exposed to an environmental compound generations earlier.

The findings, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, put a new twist on the notions of nature and nurture, with broad implications for how certain behavioral tendencies might be inherited.

The researchers -- David Crews at Texas , Michael Skinner at Washington State and colleagues -- exposed gestating female rats to vinclozolin, a popular fruit and vegetable fungicide known to disrupt hormones and have effects across generations of animals. The researchers then put the rats' third generation of offspring through a variety of behavioral tests and found they were more anxious, more sensitive to stress, and had greater activity in stress-related regions of the brain than descendants of unexposed rats.

"We are now in the third human generation since the start of the chemical revolution, since humans have been exposed to these kinds of toxins," says Crews. "This is the animal model of that."

"The ancestral exposure of your great grandmother alters your brain development to then respond to stress differently," says Skinner. "We did not know a stress response could be programmed by your ancestors' environmental exposures."

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120521163853.htm

Eat and Let Die: Insect Feeds On Toxic Plants for Protection from Predators

ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2012) — Certain insects, such as the African variegated grasshopper (Zonocerus variegatus) or the cinnabar moth (Tyria jacobaeae), native in Europe and Asia, feed on toxic plants in order to protect themselves from predators. A working group at the Botanical Institute at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), together with scientists from Technische Universität Braunschweig and the City University College, New York, have published findings on this phenomenon.


The Kiel scientists from the field of biochemical ecology have been studying for more than ten years how particular insects ingest plant toxins and store them within their own bodies. These toxins, the so-calledpyrrolizidine alkaloids, are found for example in ragwort (Senecio jacobaea), a common wild flower in Eurasia. These plants have been repeatedly in the news over the past few years, e.g. as contaminants in rocket lettuce or as compounds causing intoxication of grazing livestock. The scientists now showed that the African grasshopper has developed a specific enzyme, allowing it to store plant toxins for self defence. An almost identical enzyme was found a few years ago in the European cinnabar moth. "The most exciting aspect of this finding is that evolution has developed such a complex mechanism twice in two very different species," says Professor Dietrich Ober, head of the working group in Kiel.


Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120221090240.htm

Sugar Should Be Regulated As Toxin, Researchers Say

A spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down. But it also makes blood pressure and cholesterol go up, along with your risk for liver failure, obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Sugar and other sweeteners are, in fact, so toxic to the human body that they should be regulated as strictly as alcohol by governments worldwide, according to a commentary in the current issue of the journal Nature by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

The researchers propose regulations such as taxing all foods and drinks that include added sugar, banning sales in or near schools and placing age limits on purchases.

Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly, the researchers cite numerous studies and statistics to make their case that added sugar — or, more specifically, sucrose, an even mix of glucose and fructose found in high-fructose corn syrup and in table sugar made from sugar cane and sugar beets — has been as detrimental to society as alcohol and tobacco.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/18244-sugar-toxic-regulations.html

Polar Bears Ill from Accumulated Environmental Toxins

ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2011) — Industrial chemicals are being transported from the industrialized world to the Arctic via air and sea currents. Here, the cocktail of environmental toxins is absorbed by the sea's food chains, of which the polar bear is the top predator.

The accumulated industrial chemicals cause diseases in the polar bears which do not lead to their immediate deaths. On the other hand, the toxins damage the bones and organs of the polar bears, their immune systems and not least their reproductive systems. However, the harm suffered by the population of polar bears in eastern Greenland is not yet fully understood," says Christian Sonne.
Together with researchers from LIFE -- the Faculty of Life Sciences and Aarhus University, Christian Sonne has undertaken the first meta study of ten years of research conducted up until 2010 into the effects of contaminants on the health of the species. At the same time, he has analysed tissue and bone samples from about 100 east Greenlandic polar bears.

Christian Sonne and his colleagues from LIFE -- the Faculty of Life Sciences have previously conducted controlled experiments on the effects of environmental toxins on Arctic foxes and Greenlandic sled dogs. Both species top the Arctic food chain and are genetically and developmentally closely related to the polar bear.

The experiments showed that the damage seen in the polar bears was also evident in the groups of Arctic foxes and dogs which were fed environmental toxins, but not in the control groups.
The title of Christian Sonne's doctoral thesis is: 'Health effects from long-range transported contaminants in Arctic top predators: An integrated review based on studies of polar bears and relevant model species'.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111013121709.htm

Lake invaders may be killing birds

Scientists suggest invasive mussels in the Great Lakes may be responsible for the deaths of thousands of migratory birds.

The hunt is on in the upper reaches of Lake Michigan to count what's believed to be thousands of bird carcasses that have washed ashore this fall — a staggering toll blamed on the disruptive powers of invasive species that have taken root in the Great Lakes.


The great debate in the Asian carp crisis, still playing out in federal court and the halls of Congress, is whether the feared fish has the capability of establishing a thriving population in the Great Lakes. If so, bighead and silver carp will almost certainly, and dramatically, alter commercial and recreational fishing in the nation's largest freshwater body.

But what if, as some scientists suggest, the Great Lakes' natural defenses — plankton shortages, lower water temperatures, greater water depth and swift-moving currents — keep Asian carp from sustaining themselves in large numbers? Will the threat have been avoided?

The answer is that all invasive species bring consequences that few can predict, leading scientists to ponder the thousands of gulls, loons, mergansers and other migratory birds whose remains wash ashore along the white-sand beaches in northern Wisconsin and Michigan's upper peninsula each fall.

There is a somewhat controversial theory for this annual die-off, which by some estimates has claimed more than 100,000 birds in the last 15 years, and it involves a type of naturally occurring but deadly botulism linked to the spread of invasive zebra and quagga mussels, which entered the Great Lakes decades ago aboard ocean vessels.

"There's still a lot about this we don't know," said Joe Kaplan, of the Michigan-based nonprofit Common Coast Research & Conservation. "The one thing we do know is that it's killing a lot of birds that are important to us.


"This is a very serious problem that deserves more attention."

Like Asian carp, zebra and quagga mussels reproduce rapidly and overwhelm their environment. Scientists feared densely packed clusters of mussels would take a toll on industry, colonizing in water pipes, intake valves, and air conditioning and cooling systems. And they have.

The U.S. Geological Survey, which has studied zebra and quagga mussels for more than 20 years, rank them among the most destructive "biological invasions into North America." But few could foresee the carnage that has followed.

Zebra mussels and quagga mussels filter naturally occurring botulism and other toxins from the water. Round gobies, another problematic invasive species, eat the mussels, and birds, in turn, eat the gobies.

"The evidence is there to suggest this is happening, but it's circumstantial evidence because we haven't found any proof of it," said Tom Cooley, a biologist at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. "All we can really do at this point is to continue to monitor what's happening and maybe something in the lakes will turn around."

Michigan's DNR and the Common Coast Research & Conservation are among the organizations, including the USGS and the National Wildlife Health Center, studying the deadly phenomena that this year is expected to kill as many or more birds than died in the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer.

Scientists don't know how long botulism or similar toxins have been killing birds in the Great Lakes, but the first sizable counting came in 1999, when researchers recorded 311 birds off the shores of Lake Erie. The following year, they found 8,000 around the Great Lakes and the death counts have remained in the thousands every year since.

For now, the deaths appear limited to the northern Great Lakes region, where the concentrations of mussels and birds are higher. But so little is known about the environmental factors that contribute to these deaths that scientists can't rule out large numbers of dead birds washing up along the shore closer to Chicago and western Michigan.

After two "low years" the death toll seems to have risen again this fall, Kaplan said, with perhaps as many as 50 dead birds recovered for every mile of beach. That may be because the unusually hot summer around the Great Lakes produced more algae, which feeds the mussels' population explosions. Or it may be attributed to other factors scientists haven't yet explored.

"We're still learning," Cooley said.

The die-off has devastated the populations of a number of important and protected bird species, but the discovery of many hundreds of common loons, a threatened species in Michigan, has given researchers a rallying point to draw attention and hopefully more funding to this issue, Kaplan said.

But with so much money already being spent to minimize the spread of invasive species within the Great Lakes, and recently to stop another from entering, Kaplan said he realizes this fight may be unwinnable.

"Unfortunately, we don't begin to really study an issue until we see entire systems collapse or get out of control," Kaplan said. "But that comes at a high cost."

By Joel Hood, TRIBUNE REPORTER

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-lake-michigan-bird-deaths-20101127,0,918715.story

Coral near Deep Water Horizon well is dead or dying

Thought to be have damaged by a plume of toxins

November 2010: Communities of dead and dying corals and starfish-like brittle stars have been discovered near the Deep Water Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.

On a research ship in the Gulf of Mexico, seven miles south-west of the site of the Deep Water Horizon oil-spill, a team of scientists discovered a community of corals that includes many recently dead colonies and others that clearly are dying.

‘We discovered a community of coral that has been impacted fairly recently by something very toxic,' said the chief scientist on the cruise, Charles Fisher, a professor of biology at Penn State University and a member of the research team that selected the site for study.

Fisher said the research team, on a trip at the beginning of this month, encountered a colony of the hard coral species Madrepora that appeared to be unhealthy at a depth of 1,400 meters.

‘Although some branches of the coral colony appeared normal, other branches clearly were covered in a brown material, apparently sloughing tissue, and were producing abundant mucous,' Fisher said. The scientists sampled pieces of this hard coral and of its immediate environment then, about 400 meters away, they found a seriously stricken community of soft corals.

‘Many colonies appeared recently dead'

‘Within minutes it was evident that this site was unlike any others that we have seen over the course of hundreds of hours of studying the deep corals in the Gulf of Mexico over the last decade with remotely-operated-vehicles (ROVs) and submersibles,' Fisher said. ‘We found that extensive portions of most of the coral colonies were either recently dead or were dying. Most of the soft coral sea fans had extensive areas that were bare of tissue, covered with brown material, and/or had tissue falling off the skeleton.

Many of the colonies appeared recently dead, with no living coral tissue, still covered with decaying material, and also with a notable lack of colonization by other marine life, as would be expected on coral skeletons that had been dead for long periods of time,' Fisher said.

The scientists also found that many of the brittle stars that are the typical symbiotic partners of these types of corals also appeared to be very unhealthy. ‘Many of the dead and dying coral colonies had discoloured and immobile brittle stars - a kind of starfish - still attached,' Fisher said.

The team took a variety of samples that will be analysed for the presence of hydrocarbons and for molecular evidence of genetic damage and physiological stress that could give direct evidence of exposure to oil or dispersants from the Deep Water Horizon disaster. However, Fisher said it is possible that lab results might not be able to provide any new information.

‘For example, a plume of toxic dispersant or oil blowing through this community could have caused damage that resulted in the slow death of the corals without leaving any trace on the sea floor near the corals,' Fisher said.

'We have found a smoking gun'

‘No one yet knows if the signature of whatever toxin killed these corals can be found in their skeletons after the tissue sloughs off. No one even knows if dispersant accumulates in the tissues that it kills.'

‘The compelling evidence that we collected constitutes a smoking gun,' Fisher said. ‘The circumstantial evidence is extremely strong and compelling because we have never seen anything like this - and we have seen a lot; the visual data for recent and ongoing death are crystal clear and consistent over at least 30 colonies; the site is close to the Deep Water Horizon; the research site is at the right depth and direction to have been impacted by a deep-water plume, based on NOAA models and empirical data; and the impact was detected only a few months after the spill was contained.'

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/deep-sea-corals.html