Jornal de Proteômica e Bioinformática
Acesso livre
ISSN: 0974-276X
ISSN: 0974-276X
AD Diwan*, S N Harke, Archana Panche
Osmoregulation in several crustaceans is an adaptive function to carry out different important physiological roles and processes during their entire life cycle. Most of the penaeid shrimp during their entire life span, spend part of their life in deeper marine waters and rest in brackish waters. For breeding and spawning, they migrate in high saline waters and for the purpose of growth particularly during the early phases of development; they migrate towards a brackish water environment. This kind of anadromous and catadromous migratory behaviour of the animals requires a lot of energy to meet the physiological stresses and successful adaptations to adjust to new changing environments frequently. The mechanism of homeostasis plays an important role in all these animals to maintain internal salt and ionic concentration of the body fluids always higher than the surrounding medium. Several workers have tried to reveal physiological mechanisms underlying osmoregulatory adaptations in a number of crustaceans including shrimp. Besides the role of organic constituents, several studies also mentioned about the role of hormones and endocrine glands in osmoregulation. In recent times due to advancements in molecular tools in molecular biology and genomics, efforts are being made to find out the gene responsible for controlling salt and ions in body fluids. In the present paper, efforts have been made to discuss intracellular and extracellular osmotic adaptations and also neuroendocrine control of Osmotic and Ionic Regulation. With the advent of development in the field of molecular biology and genomics in recent years, future perspectives of research directions are also mentioned to reveal mechanisms of osmoregulatory adaptations at the genome level.