Isolation and Purification of Hormones of the Crustacean Eye-stalk

Abstract

DURING the past three decades, investigations of neuro-secretory eye-stalk hormones among crustaceans have revealed a variety of physiological effects produced by eye-stalk ablation as well as by replacement experiments involving injection of extracts of eye-stalk tissue^1,2. Resolution of the number of hormones involved in such physiological responses cannot be readily made with the crude extracts so far used. Progress along this line of crustacean endocrinology will evidently depend on isolation and purification of the different hormones, determination of their chemical nature and structure, and testing such purified preparations for the specificity of their physiological effects. Some attempt in this direction with the pigmentary effector hormones indicates that they may be peptide in nature^3–5. On the basis of physiological⁶ and specificity tests⁷, the light-adapting retinal pigment hormone and the hormone which concentrates pigment in erythrophores appear to be different entities; less-complete separation of retinal pigment hormone and erythrophore-dispersing substance by paper electrophoresis has also been reported⁸.