Document of bibliographic reference 355197

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Vexitoxins: conotoxin-like venom peptides from predatory gastropods of the genus Vexillum

Abstract

Venoms of predatory marine cone snails are intensely studied because of the biomedical applications of the neuropeptides that they contain, termed conotoxins. Meanwhile some gastropod lineages have independently acquired secretory glands strikingly similar to the venom gland of cone snails, suggesting that they possess similar venoms. Here we focus on the most diversified of these clades, the genus Vexillum. Based on the analysis of a multi-species proteo-transcriptomic dataset, we show that Vexillum species indeed produce complex venoms dominated by highly diversified short cysteine-rich peptides, vexitoxins. Vexitoxins possess the same precursor organization, display overlapping cysteine frameworks and share several common post-translational modifications with conotoxins. Some vexitoxins show sequence similarity to conotoxins and adopt similar domain conformations, including a pharmacologically relevant inhibitory cysteine knot motif. The Vexillum envenomation gland (gL) is a notably more recent evolutionary novelty than the conoidean venom gland. Thus, we hypothesize lower divergence between vexitoxin genes, and their ancestral ‘somatic’ counterparts compared to that in conotoxins, and we find support for this hypothesis in the evolution of the vexitoxin cluster V027. We use this example to discuss how future studies on vexitoxins can inform the origin of conotoxins, and how they may help to address outstanding questions in venom evolution.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000838576600007

Bibliographic citation

Kuznetsova, K.G.; Zvonareva, S.; Ziganshin, R.; Mekhova, E.S.; Dgebuadze, P.; Yen, D.T.H.; Nguyen, T.H.T.; Moshkovskii, S.A.; Fedosov, A.E. (2022). Vexitoxins: conotoxin-like venom peptides from predatory gastropods of the genus Vexillum. Proc. - Royal Soc., Biol. Sci. 289: 20221152. https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1152

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true