Transcript – Characterization of Jellyfish Toxins and Their Toxicological Effects on Fish

This project focuses on jellyfish, toxins and their effect on fish. Jellyfish are equipped with stinging cells called normalises. Mouths explode upon contact with a prey and the potent venom in humans. The effect of the venom varies from a mild skin rash to a lethal syndrome. Venom composition changes from species to species and its components. The peptides that make the venom cocktail are poorly characterized, and so it is the effect on the prey. This project proposes to characterize the toxins from jellyfish that are common in the Gulf of Mexico and assess their effect on fish. Specifically, we want to isolate and characterize the components of the jellyfish venom exposed zebrafish to the toxins and using a transcript tomac approach assess the effect of the toxins on the fish of physiology and metabolism. This project is still ongoing and has been heavily delayed by Covid. So we present here the preliminary results. We have developed a protocol to extract toxins from jellyfish tentacles. We have extracted the toxins from two jellyfish species and we plan to continue extraction and testing on fish. We would like to thank the T-3 committee and the graduate and undergraduate students that contributed to this project. This project has been carried out in the militant Laden laboratories at Texas A&M University at Galveston.