Paralytic shellfish poison (PSP) profiles and toxification of short-necked clams fed with the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense

As a part of our studies on paralytic shellfish poison (PSP) accumulation kinetics in bivalves, short-necked clam Tapes japonia was experimentally contaminated with PSP by being fed with the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 days, and the processes of PSP accumulation and bioconversion were investigated: the toxicity level was determined by mouse bioassay and toxin components were identified by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The strain of A. tamarense used in this study possessed a specific toxicity of 186.7 +/- 81 (mean +/- S.D., n = 5) x 10(-6) MU/cell. Total toxin concentration of this strain was 140.4 +/- 61 (mean S.D., n = 5) fmol/cell. The toxicity level of short-necked clams increased almost in parallel with the abundance of A. tamarense, reaching 1.8, 3.2, 3.8, 3.5 and 4.6 MU/g meat for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 days of feeding, respectively. The accumulation rates of PSP toxins, which are the ratio of the total amount of toxins accumulated in the bivalves to the estimated intake in each feeding experiment, were 7.5, 8.1, 5.7, 4.2 and 4.4% for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 days, respectively. At the end of each exposure period, many undigested algal cells were found in pseudofeces under microscopic observation. There was a remarkable difference in the relative proportions of the predominant toxin components between A. tamarense and short-necked clams. The most notable difference was the change in the relative amounts of C2 (carbamoyl-N-sulfo-11beta-hydroxysaxitoxin sulfate), GTX1 and GTX 4 during the first two days. In the toxic bivalves, the amount of C2, which is dominant in A. tamarense, decreased to below half a percent after being ingested. Subsequently, the amount of GTX1 in the shellfish meat reached 50.1 mol%, while that of GTX4 decreased to about half of that in A. tamarense. As for the configuration of 11-hydroxysulfate, PSP components in A. tamarense exist almost exclusively as beta-epimers (GTX3, GTX4, C2 and C4), accounting for 72.8 mol% of the total. This contrasts with the case of the short-necked clams, where the beta-epimers represented 25.8, 33.8, 30.8, 36.8 and 28.5 mol% of the total after 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 days, respectively. PSP components seemed to be converted rapidly at an early stage of the feeding of A. tamarense.