Molecular Biology of Marine Animals in Japan——Use of Marine Animals to Study Common and Diverse Cellular System

摘要

1 Molecular Marine Biology Molecular biology was established in the 1930s.It is mainly concerned with understanding the molecular interactions in a cell,including those between DNA,RNA,protein,lipid and carbohydrate.It is also concerned with how these interactions are regulated.Marine animal is a vast resource and could be used as model systems to address basic biology questions,such as signal transduction,mechanisms of biosynthesis and cellular transport.Major discoveries of fundamental biological processes—many of them are important to human health and medical research—have come from studies of marine organisms.For example,many of the researches with marine invertebrates have graced the Nobel Prize,such as studies on ion channels in nerve system using squid giant axon,physiological and molecular basis of memories in neurons using a marine mollusc Aplysia,finding of a cell cycle protein cyclin using sea urchin and surf clam eggs,and finding of GFP using jellyfish.