Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers
Although snake venoms have been the subject of intense research, primarily because of their tremendous potential as a bioresource for design and development of therapeutic compounds, some specific groups of snakes, such as the genus Atractaspis, have been completely neglected. To date only limited n...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2013
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3847709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24169588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins5111948 |
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author | Terrat, Yves Sunagar, Kartik Fry, Bryan G. Jackson, Timothy N. W. Scheib, Holger Fourmy, Rudy Verdenaud, Marion Blanchet, Guillaume Antunes, Agostinho Ducancel, Frederic |
author_facet | Terrat, Yves Sunagar, Kartik Fry, Bryan G. Jackson, Timothy N. W. Scheib, Holger Fourmy, Rudy Verdenaud, Marion Blanchet, Guillaume Antunes, Agostinho Ducancel, Frederic |
author_sort | Terrat, Yves |
collection | PubMed |
description | Although snake venoms have been the subject of intense research, primarily because of their tremendous potential as a bioresource for design and development of therapeutic compounds, some specific groups of snakes, such as the genus Atractaspis, have been completely neglected. To date only limited number of toxins, such as sarafotoxins have been well characterized from this lineage. In order to investigate the molecular diversity of venom from Atractaspis aterrima—the slender burrowing asp, we utilized a high-throughput transcriptomic approach completed with an original bioinformatics analysis pipeline. Surprisingly, we found that Sarafotoxins do not constitute the major ingredient of the transcriptomic cocktail; rather a large number of previously well-characterized snake venom-components were identified. Notably, we recovered a large diversity of three-finger toxins (3FTxs), which were found to have evolved under the significant influence of positive selection. From the normalized and non-normalized transcriptome libraries, we were able to evaluate the relative abundance of the different toxin groups, uncover rare transcripts, and gain new insight into the transcriptomic machinery. In addition to previously characterized toxin families, we were able to detect numerous highly-transcribed compounds that possess all the key features of venom-components and may constitute new classes of toxins. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3847709 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38477092013-12-03 Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers Terrat, Yves Sunagar, Kartik Fry, Bryan G. Jackson, Timothy N. W. Scheib, Holger Fourmy, Rudy Verdenaud, Marion Blanchet, Guillaume Antunes, Agostinho Ducancel, Frederic Toxins (Basel) Article Although snake venoms have been the subject of intense research, primarily because of their tremendous potential as a bioresource for design and development of therapeutic compounds, some specific groups of snakes, such as the genus Atractaspis, have been completely neglected. To date only limited number of toxins, such as sarafotoxins have been well characterized from this lineage. In order to investigate the molecular diversity of venom from Atractaspis aterrima—the slender burrowing asp, we utilized a high-throughput transcriptomic approach completed with an original bioinformatics analysis pipeline. Surprisingly, we found that Sarafotoxins do not constitute the major ingredient of the transcriptomic cocktail; rather a large number of previously well-characterized snake venom-components were identified. Notably, we recovered a large diversity of three-finger toxins (3FTxs), which were found to have evolved under the significant influence of positive selection. From the normalized and non-normalized transcriptome libraries, we were able to evaluate the relative abundance of the different toxin groups, uncover rare transcripts, and gain new insight into the transcriptomic machinery. In addition to previously characterized toxin families, we were able to detect numerous highly-transcribed compounds that possess all the key features of venom-components and may constitute new classes of toxins. MDPI 2013-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC3847709/ /pubmed/24169588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins5111948 Text en © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Terrat, Yves Sunagar, Kartik Fry, Bryan G. Jackson, Timothy N. W. Scheib, Holger Fourmy, Rudy Verdenaud, Marion Blanchet, Guillaume Antunes, Agostinho Ducancel, Frederic Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title | Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title_full | Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title_fullStr | Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title_full_unstemmed | Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title_short | Atractaspis aterrima Toxins: The First Insight into the Molecular Evolution of Venom in Side-Stabbers |
title_sort | atractaspis aterrima toxins: the first insight into the molecular evolution of venom in side-stabbers |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3847709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24169588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins5111948 |
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