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Concept
Tetrodotoxin
Summary
Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a potent neurotoxin. Its name derives from Tetraodontiformes, an order that includes pufferfish, porcupinefish, ocean sunfish, and triggerfish; several of these species carry the toxin. Although tetrodotoxin was discovered in these fish and found in several other animals (e.g., in blue-ringed octopuses, rough-skinned newts, and moon snails), it is actually produced by certain infecting or symbiotic bacteria like Pseudoalteromonas, Pseudomonas, and Vibrio as well as other species found in animals.
Although it produces thousands of intoxications annually and several deaths, it has shown efficacy for the treatment of cancer-related pain in phase II and III clinical trials.
Tetrodotoxin is a sodium channel blocker. It inhibits the firing of action potentials in neurons by binding to the voltage-gated sodium channels in nerve cell membranes and blocking the passage of sodium ions (responsible for the rising phase of an action potential) into the neuron. This prevents the nervous system from carrying messages and thus muscles from contracting in response to nervous stimulation.
Its mechanism of action, selective blocking of the sodium channel, was shown definitively in 1964 by Toshio Narahashi and John W. Moore at Duke University, using the sucrose gap voltage clamp technique.
Apart from their bacterial species of most likely ultimate biosynthetic origin (see below), tetrodotoxin has been isolated from widely differing animal species, including:
all octopuses and cuttlefish in small amounts, but specifically several species of the blue-ringed octopus, including Hapalochlaena maculosa (where it was called "maculotoxin"),
various pufferfish species,
certain angelfish,
species of Nassarius gastropods,
species of Naticidae (moon snails),
several starfish, including Astropecten species,
several species of xanthid crabs.
Official source
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