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Role of regulatory peptides in parasitic platyhelminths and their vertebrate hosts: possible novel factors in host-parasite interactions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2009
Extract
The study of regulatory peptides has its origins in the classical work of Bayliss & Starling (1902). Their pioneering work on the presence of a factor in intestinal extracts which, when injected into the bloodstream of experimental animals, elicited pancreatic secretion, led to the genesis of the concept of the hormone, i.e. a chemical messenger which is released from one part of the body in response to a stimulus to travel in the bloodstream to a distant target tissue where it would elicit a physiological response appropriate to the original stimulus. In keeping with accepted scientific tradition, this concept had its critics. Pavlov, who had been studying secretory stimulation from a different perspective, concluded from his work on salivation in dogs, that this was mediated via neural pathways. With hindsight, and the benefits of knowledge obtained from nearly a century of scientific research, we now know that these pioneers were in actual fact studying different aspects of the same process and that both theories were complementary. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ascribe secretory control to either circulating or neuronal factors as both appear to be intimately involved in regulation.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Parasitology , Volume 102 , supplement S1: Symposia of the British Society for Parasitology Volume 28:Parasite neurobiology , January 1991 , pp. S93 - S105
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991
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