An alarm pheromone in the venom gland of Vespa velutina: evidence revisited from the european invasive population

Nowadays, spider venom research focuses on the neurotoxic activity of small peptides. In this study, we investigated high-molecular-mass compounds that have either enzymatic activity or housekeeping functions present in either the venom gland or venom of Pamphobeteus verdolaga. We used proteomic and transcriptomic-assisted approaches to recognize the proteins sequences related to high-molecular-mass compounds present in either venom gland or venom. We report the amino acid sequences (partial or complete) of 45 high-molecular-mass compounds detected by transcriptomics showing similarity to other proteins with either enzymatic activity (i.e., phospholipases A2, kunitz-type, hyaluronidases, and sphingomyelinase D) or housekeeping functions involved in the signaling process, glucanotransferase function, and beta-N-acetylglucosaminidase activity. MS/MS analysis showed fragments exhibiting a resemblance similarity with different sequences detected by transcriptomics corresponding to sphingomyelinase D, hyaluronidase, lycotoxins, cysteine-rich secretory proteins, and kunitz-type serine protease inhibitors, among others. Additionally, we report a probably new protein sequence corresponding to the lycotoxin family detected by transcriptomics. The phylogeny analysis suggested that P. verdolaga includes a basal protein that underwent a duplication event that gave origin to the lycotoxin proteins reported for Lycosa sp. This approach allows proposing an evolutionary relationship of high-molecular-mass proteins among P. verdolaga and other spider species.

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Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland

Toxins ◽

10.3390/toxins13020108 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (2) ◽

pp. 108

Author(s):

Juliette Gorson ◽

Giulia Fassio ◽

Emily S. Lau ◽

Mandë Holford

Keyword(s):

Venom Gland ◽

Molecular Study ◽

Strongly Correlated ◽

Animal Evolution ◽

Diet Diversity ◽

Dietary Breadth ◽

Venom Composition ◽

Marine Snails ◽

Predatory Strategy ◽

Definition Of

Predator-prey interactions are thought to play a driving role in animal evolution, especially for groups that have developed venom as their predatory strategy. However, how the diet of venomous animals influences the composition of venom arsenals remains uncertain. Two prevailing hypotheses to explain the relationship between diet and venom composition focus on prey preference and the types of compounds in venom, and a positive correlation between dietary breadth and the number of compounds in venom. Here, we examined venom complexity, phylogenetic relationship, collection depth, and biogeography of the Terebridae (auger snails) to determine if repeated innovations in terebrid foregut anatomy and venom composition correspond to diet variation. We performed the first molecular study of the diet of terebrid marine snails by metabarcoding the gut content of 71 terebrid specimens from 17 species. Our results suggest that the presence or absence of a venom gland is strongly correlated with dietary breadth. Specifically, terebrid species without a venom gland displayed greater diversity in their diet. Additionally, we propose a revision of the definition of venom complexity in conoidean snails to more accurately capture the breadth of ecological influences. These findings suggest that prey diet is an important factor in terebrid venom evolution and diversification and further investigations of other understudied organisms, like terebrids, are needed to develop robust hypotheses in this area.

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Venom-gland transcriptomic, venomic, and antivenomic profiles of the spine-bellied sea snake (Hydrophis curtus) from the South China Sea

BMC Genomics ◽

10.1186/s12864-021-07824-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Hong-Yan Zhao ◽

Lin Wen ◽

Yu-Feng Miao ◽

Yu Du ◽

Yan Sun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

South China Sea ◽

South China ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

De Novo ◽

Venom Gland ◽

The South China Sea ◽

Protein Families ◽

The South ◽

Widespread Species ◽

China Sea

Abstract Background A comprehensive evaluation of the -omic profiles of venom is important for understanding the potential function and evolution of snake venom. Here, we conducted an integrated multi-omics-analysis to unveil the venom-transcriptomic and venomic profiles in a same group of spine-bellied sea snakes (Hydrophis curtus) from the South China Sea, where the snake is a widespread species and might generate regionally-specific venom potentially harmful to human activities. The capacity of two heterologous antivenoms to immunocapture the H. curtus venom was determined for an in-depth evaluation of their rationality in treatment of H. curtus envenomation. In addition, a phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood was used to detect the adaptive molecular evolution of full-length toxin-coding unigenes. Results A total of 90,909,384 pairs of clean reads were generated via Illumina sequencing from a pooled cDNA library of six specimens, and yielding 148,121 unigenes through de novo assembly. Sequence similarity searching harvested 63,845 valid annotations, including 63,789 non-toxin-coding and 56 toxin-coding unigenes belonging to 22 protein families. Three protein families, three-finger toxins (3-FTx), phospholipase A2 (PLA2), and cysteine-rich secretory protein, were detected in the venom proteome. 3-FTx (27.15% in the transcriptome/41.94% in the proteome) and PLA2 (59.71%/49.36%) were identified as the most abundant families in the venom-gland transcriptome and venom proteome. In addition, 24 unigenes from 11 protein families were shown to have experienced positive selection in their evolutionary history, whereas four were relatively conserved throughout evolution. Commercial Naja atra antivenom exhibited a stronger capacity than Bungarus multicinctus antivenom to immunocapture H. curtus venom components, especially short neurotoxins, with the capacity of both antivenoms to immunocapture short neurotoxins being weaker than that for PLA2s. Conclusions Our study clarified the venom-gland transcriptomic and venomic profiles along with the within-group divergence of a H. curtus population from the South China Sea. Adaptive evolution of most venom components driven by natural selection appeared to occur rapidly during evolutionary history. Notably, the utility of commercial N. atra and B. multicinctus antivenoms against H. curtus toxins was not comprehensive; thus, the development of species-specific antivenom is urgently needed.

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