production of the neurotoxin bmaa by a marine cyanobacterium生产的神经毒素bmaa海洋藻青菌.pdfVIP

Mar. Drugs 2007, 5, 180-196 Marine Drugs ISSN 1660-3397 © 2007 by MDPI /marinedrugs Full Original Paper Production of the Neurotoxin BMAA by a Marine Cyanobacterium Sandra Anne Banack 1,2, Holly E. Johnson 1, Ran Cheng 1 and Paul Alan Cox 1,* 1 Institute for Ethnomedicine, Box 3464, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 83001, USA; E-mails: sbanack@ (Sandra Anne Banack); holly@ (Holly E. Johnson); ladianaus@ (Ran Cheng) 2 Department of Biological Science, California State University, Fullerton, California 92834, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-mail: paul@ Received: November 17, 2007 / Accepted: 4 December 2007 / Published: 6 December 2007 Abstract: Diverse species of cyanobacteria have recently been discovered to produce the neurotoxic non-protein amino acid β-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA). In Guam, BMAA has been studied as a possible environmental toxin in the diets of indigenous Chamorro people known to have high levels of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/ Parkinsonism Dementia Complex (ALS/PDC). BMAA has been found to accumulate in brain tissues of patients with progressive neurodegenerative illness in North America. In Guam, BMAA was found to be produced by endosymbiotic cyanobacteria of the genus Nostoc which live in specialized cycad roots. We here report detection of BMAA in laboratory cultures of a free-living marine species of Nostoc. We successfully detected BMAA in this marine species of Nostoc with five differe