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Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery
Nature endowed snakes with a lethal secretion known as venom, which has been fine-tuned over millions of years of evolution. Snakes utilize venom to subdue their prey and to survive in their natural habitat. Venom is known to be a very poisonous mixture, consisting of a variety of molecules, such as...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266942/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30441876 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins10110474 |
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author | Munawar, Aisha Ali, Syed Abid Akrem, Ahmed Betzel, Christian |
author_facet | Munawar, Aisha Ali, Syed Abid Akrem, Ahmed Betzel, Christian |
author_sort | Munawar, Aisha |
collection | PubMed |
description | Nature endowed snakes with a lethal secretion known as venom, which has been fine-tuned over millions of years of evolution. Snakes utilize venom to subdue their prey and to survive in their natural habitat. Venom is known to be a very poisonous mixture, consisting of a variety of molecules, such as carbohydrates, nucleosides, amino acids, lipids, proteins and peptides. Proteins and peptides are the major constituents of the dry weight of snake venoms and are of main interest for scientific investigations as well as for various pharmacological applications. Snake venoms contain enzymatic and non-enzymatic proteins and peptides, which are grouped into different families based on their structure and function. Members of a single family display significant similarities in their primary, secondary and tertiary structures, but in many cases have distinct pharmacological functions and different bioactivities. The functional specificity of peptides belonging to the same family can be attributed to subtle variations in their amino acid sequences. Currently, complementary tools and techniques are utilized to isolate and characterize the peptides, and study their potential applications as molecular probes, and possible templates for drug discovery and design investigations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6266942 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62669422018-12-07 Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery Munawar, Aisha Ali, Syed Abid Akrem, Ahmed Betzel, Christian Toxins (Basel) Review Nature endowed snakes with a lethal secretion known as venom, which has been fine-tuned over millions of years of evolution. Snakes utilize venom to subdue their prey and to survive in their natural habitat. Venom is known to be a very poisonous mixture, consisting of a variety of molecules, such as carbohydrates, nucleosides, amino acids, lipids, proteins and peptides. Proteins and peptides are the major constituents of the dry weight of snake venoms and are of main interest for scientific investigations as well as for various pharmacological applications. Snake venoms contain enzymatic and non-enzymatic proteins and peptides, which are grouped into different families based on their structure and function. Members of a single family display significant similarities in their primary, secondary and tertiary structures, but in many cases have distinct pharmacological functions and different bioactivities. The functional specificity of peptides belonging to the same family can be attributed to subtle variations in their amino acid sequences. Currently, complementary tools and techniques are utilized to isolate and characterize the peptides, and study their potential applications as molecular probes, and possible templates for drug discovery and design investigations. MDPI 2018-11-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6266942/ /pubmed/30441876 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins10110474 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Munawar, Aisha Ali, Syed Abid Akrem, Ahmed Betzel, Christian Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title | Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title_full | Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title_fullStr | Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title_full_unstemmed | Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title_short | Snake Venom Peptides: Tools of Biodiscovery |
title_sort | snake venom peptides: tools of biodiscovery |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6266942/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30441876 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins10110474 |
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