Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 13, 10 July 2012, Pages R510-R514
Gerhard Haszprunar and Andreas Wanninger
SummaryPeople often associate the animal phylum ‘Mollusca’ with their most species-rich or popular subgroups: gastropods (snails, whelks, slugs, and limpets), bivalves (mussels and clams), and cephalopods (the pearl boat Nautilus, sepias, squids and octopuses, and the many fossil ammonites and belemnites). Of these, the gastropods, with more than 100,000 extant species, comprise about 80% of all molluscs and are by far the most diverse group within the phylum. The remaining classes, the aplacophoran Solenogastres (or Neomeniomorpha) and Caudofoveata (or Chaetodermomorpha), the Polyplacophora (chitons), Monoplacophora (or Tryblidia or Tergomya), and Scaphopoda (tusk-shells), are known to a much lesser extent (Box 1), but add significantly to the variability of the molluscan bauplan and to our understanding of molluscan phylogeny and evolution.
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- Invertebrate Evolution: Bringing Order to the Molluscan Chaos
Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 23, 6 December 2011, Pages R964-R966
Maximilian J. Telford and Graham E. Budd
SummaryWhile the seven classes within the phylum Mollusca are clearly defined morphologically and molecularly, relationships between them have long been contentious. Two recent phylogenomic studies take an important step forward with intriguing implications for their evolution.
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- Do trematode parasites disrupt defence-cell signalling in their snail hosts?
Trends in Parasitology, Volume 22, Issue 4, 1 April 2006, Pages 154-159
Anthony J. Walker
AbstractMore than a decade ago, it was postulated that components derived from trematode parasites block receptors on the defence cells of their snail intermediate hosts, thus preventing host-cell activation and parasite elimination. This phenomenon has still not been investigated extensively. However, recent work concerning the molecular regulation of the molluscan defence response provides a new framework for studies that focus on an extension of this original concept – subversion of host cell signalling by trematode parasites. The hypothesis is that, to facilitate survival and replication in their intermediate hosts, trematode parasites downregulate host defence responses by interfering with key signal-transduction pathways in snail defence cells.
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Copyright © 1982 All rights reserved.
Trends in Neurosciences, Volume 5, 116-119, 1 January 1982
Voltage-dependent conductances of vertebrate neurones
Paul Adams11 Paul Adams is at the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, NY 11794, U.S.A.
Until quite recently the electrical behaviour of vertebrate nerve cells revealed by microelectrode recordings has been largely explained in terms of quantitative data and concepts obtained with molluscan neurones. Attempts are now being made in several laboratories to characterize the voltage-dependent currents of vertebrate neurones themselves. Some of the terminology developed for molluscan excitable membranes is still useful in a vertebrate context. However, it is now clear that analogy is no substitute for direct knowledge. Various mixtures of a palette of membrane conductances made up the electrical personality of each vertebrate neurone type. Some of this new work is reviewed below.