Subject(s)
Fish Products/history , Fishes, Poisonous , Research/history , Tetrodotoxin/history , Animals , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans , JapanABSTRACT
One century has passed since fugu toxin was first named tetrodotoxin by Tahara. Chemical problems such as crystallization of tetrodotoxin, followed by structure determination by the research groups headed by Tsuda, Hirata, Woodward, and Mosher, and its subsequent synthesis by Kishi have been solved. In the last 10 years, research on the distribution of tetrodotoxin in nature has shown that tetrodotoxin is not produced by fugu fish, but rather is formed by sea bacteria such as Vibrio, Alteromonas, Photobacterium, and Aeomonas. However, it remains unclear why tetrodotoxin accumulates at a high concentration only in fugu.
Subject(s)
Fishes , Tetrodotoxin/history , Animals , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , JapanABSTRACT
Since Dr. Y. Tawara started investigation of the lethal paralytic toxin (tetrodotoxin) from globefish just 100 years ago, Japanese researchers have contributed greatly at every stage of its chemical and pharmacological analysis as well as to the molecular studies which led to the discovery of the sodium channel as its target. On this special ocasion, I briefly review the pharmacology of tetrodotoxin and the molecular structure of the sodium channel.
