Physiological Roles of Vanadium-Binding Substance Extracted from Ascidian Blood Cells

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The unusual ability of ascidian blood cells to accumulate vanadium in excess of one million times its level in seawater has attracted the interest of investigators from various fields of study. During the course of this experiment, we have succeeded to isolate highly acidic and vanadium-containing blood cells (vanadocytes) from among several types of ascidian blood cell, using a combined approach of density-gradient centrifugation and ESR spectrometry. It has been also revealed that this cell type contains vanadium in both +3 and +4 oxidation states, with a ratio of 97.6 : 2.4. Furthermore, a vanadium-binding substance, vanadobin, was revealed to exist in the vanadocytes and to have the ability to reduce vanadate (V) to vanady (IV), as clarified by the data obtained by ESR spectrometry.