Site of the Week
Cone shells
http://grimwade.biochem.unimelb.edu.au/cone/
Members of the genus Conus are a bit different from the shellfish you find on UK seashores. Instead of sitting peacefully filter feeding, or making a tasty addition to a seafood platter, these molluscs are active and venomous hunters. Some of them go for fish, others have cannibalistic tendencies, and some have given unwitting humans the rare opportunity to be killed by a snail. Intruiged? Well, this is the place to visit to find out more.
As well as being able to see what they look like, you can read-up on coneshell hunting techniques, and see remarkable movies of unfortunate fish meeting their doom. Read accounts of people who’ve picked up a pretty shell on a Phillipines beach and got more than they bargained for, like a complex cocktail of highly potent brain toxins, for instance.
Scientists studying these conotoxins have made some interesting discoveries, and you can find out about these too. It seems that as well as being able to paralyse and cause agony, the toxins have pain relieving abilities, and because of the way the toxins are very specific about the tissues they target, they may be used to design drugs which act only where doctors want them to. Download the plugin and you can view the conotoxin molecules in glorious 3D.
One problem is that this is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde website - one minute it’s easy explanation and movie clips, the next it’s in-depth neurobiology and molecular chemistry. The authors have put in an ‘introduction to neurobiology’ link, but even this requires lots of prior knowledge. But don’t be put off if disulphide loops and sodium channels don’t mean anything to you. Coneshells are amazing, and the site still has plenty for you to sink your fang into.
Richard Northover
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