Talk:Pfiesteria piscicida
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
the first link doesn't seem to be working. Any ideas on how to fix it? Matthias5 18:59, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Nearly every result from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=pfiesteria+piscicida&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search disagrees with the author's claim that p.piscicida is non-toxic.--Kmclaughlin 10:35, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Other Studies
Litaker et. al. published what may be the definitive peer-reviewed analysis of P. piscicida's life cycle in the highly regarded Journal of Phycology in 2002. Using state-of-the-art DNA sequence tagging they insured that they had a clean clonal colony of the beast and followed its life cycle. No amoeba stage ever existed.
The confusion seems to lie in the contamination of the tanks used inthe original Burkholder et. al. studies. Amoeba were there, but it was surely not a monoculture to begin with. The fish themselves bring untold other biota into the tanks.
Other research (I don't have the name but am looking) has shown that P. Piscicida doesn't have the sequence to be capable of making a classic phytoplankton neurotoxin. Additionally, NOAA's lab in Charleston has been trying to grow (and observe) monocultures for about 4 years and has yet to show the complex life cycle orignially thought to define the phenomenon. Nor has it shown a classic neurotoxin.
[edit] New Research
I updated this today to reflect the most recent research. A NOAA scientist has isolated the fish killing toxin produced by P. Piscidida. The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology this week. Hopefully, this will allow this article to stay as it is, reflecting our best understanding of the dinoflagellate. The Litaker et al article was 5 years ago and plenty more research has been done on both species of Pfiesteria since then.
