Saxitoxin-group neurotoxins (paralytic shellfish poisons) have been identified in a cultured strain of
Anabaena circinalis and in natural bloom samples in which this species was the dominant organism
collected from widely distributed sites in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia. These toxins have
hitherto been isolated almost exclusively from 'red tide' dinoflagellates and contaminated shellfish.
Two 'aphantoxins', which appear to be identical to two of the paralytic shellfish poisons, have been
identified in a cyanobacterium from a small number of sites in New Hampshire, USA. The conclusions
are supported by electrophysiological studies and by high-performance liquid chromatographic
(HPLC) and fast atom bombardment-mass spectrometric (FAB-MS) analyses.
Early accounts by European explorers and settlers of South Australia contain numerous references to
scums or discoloured water that are consistent with cyanobacterial blooms. Documented reports refer
back to at least 1853. The first detailed scientific account of toxic cyanobacteria appeared in 1878. In
a perceptive and prescient paper in Nature, the Adelaide assayer and chemist George Francis reported
on stock deaths at Milang on the shores of Lake Alexandrina in South Australia. Francis attributed
the deaths to the ingestion and toxicity of scums of the cyanobacterium Nodularia spumigena. Reports
of cyanobacterial blooms, scums and associated problems in Lake Alexandrina and in the River Murray
between about 1851 and 1888 are discussed and comparisons are made with the reactions to blooms a
century later.
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