Shinri Horiuchi

Monoclonal antibodies to chicken iodopsin.

The protein moiety of chicken iodopsin, R-photopsin, was purified from the chicken retina using a sucrose flotation method followed by two steps of column chromatography. Apparent molecular weights of R-photopsin and scotopsin (the protein moiety of chicken rhodopsin), which was partly purified in the process of purification of R-photopsin, were estimated to be 34,000 and 36,000, respectively, by sodium docecylsulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Using the purified R-photopsin as an antigen, four kinds of hybridoma cells which secreted monoclonal antibodies specific for R-photopsin and iodopsin were prepared. The antibodies thus obtained reacted with neither other chicken cone visual pigments nor rhodopsin as analyzed by immunoblots and immunoprecipitation methods. All the monoclonal antibodies stained the majority of the cone outer segments in chicken retina, while an antiserum raised against cattle rhodopsin stained the rod outer segments as well as some cone outer segments in the retina.

Polyclad turbellarians collected on the Osaka University Expedition to Viti Levu, Fiji, in 1985, with remarks on distribution and phylogeny of the genus Discoplana

We report the first records from Viti Levu, Fiji, for four species of polyclad turbellarians: Discoplana gigas (Schmarda), Paraplanocera oligoglena (Schmarda), Cestoplana cuneata Sopott-Ehlers et Schmidt, and Pericelis byerleyana (Collingwood). D. gigas has the widest distribution in the Indo-West Pacific among the six described species of Discoplana, and shows a wider range of color variation than has been attributed to it before. Analysis of morphological features in these species reveals that Discoplana can be divided hierarchically into several sister-species groups based upon differences in structure of the vagina and of the penis. Four species, occurring mainly in the Pacific, share an apomorphic feature of the vagina, a feature not seen in the other two from the Indian Ocean. This suggests that Discoplana originated in the Indo-West Pacific.