Venomics: Digging into the evolution of venomous systems and learning to twist nature to fight pathology
✍ Scribed by Juan J. Calvete
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Year
- 2009
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 166 KB
- Volume
- 72
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1874-3919
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
From an anthropocentric standpoint, our tiny blue planet can be referred to as a cosmic island plenty of poisonous animals that can threaten the human life. Indeed, venomous organisms are widely spread throughout the animal kingdom, comprising more than 100.000 species distributed among all major phyla, such as chordates (reptiles, fishes, amphibians, mammals), echinoderms (starfishes, sea urchins), molluscs (cone snails, octopi), annelids (leeches), nemertines, arthropods (arachnids, insects, myriapods) and cnidarians (sea anemones, jellyfish, corals). In any habitat there is a competition for resources, and every ecosystem on Earth supporting life contains poisonous or venomous organisms. One of the most fascinating techniques of capturing prey or defending oneself is the use of poisons or venoms. Venom represents an adaptive trait and an example of convergent evolution [1,2], and reviewed by Bryan G. Fry (University of Melbourne, Australia) and colleagues in this issue [3]). Venoms are deadly cocktails, each comprising unique mixtures of peptides and proteins naturally tailored by Natural Selection to act on vital systems of the prey or victim. Venom toxins disturb the activity of critical enzymes, receptors, or ion channels, thus disarranging the central and peripheral nervous systems, the cardiovascular and the neuromuscular systems, blood coagulation and homeostasis. Venom proteins are the result of the duplication of ordinary body proteins, often involved in key physiological processes, that were recruited through yet elusive mechanism(s) into the venom proteome. Due to their high degree of target specificity, venom toxins have been increasingly used as pharmacological tools and as prototypes for drug development.
The medicinal value of venoms has been known from ancient times. Apitherapy, the medicinal use of honey bee products, dates back as far as ancient Egypt and is reported in the history of Europe and Asia. Charlemagne and Ivan the Terrible, for example, reportedly used bee venom to treat joint ailments. In Christianity, the serpent was seen as a representative of evil likely due to the biblic allegory of Adam, Eve, the apple and the snake, sculptured innumerable times in Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals. However many other cultures have believed in the healing power of serpents for thousands of years. Indeed, the snake is a symbol of medicine due to its association with Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. The medical uses of scorpion and snake venoms are well documented in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, and an Islamic traditional tale speaks of Muhammed being ill and since no cure could be found he permitted the use of snake venom. However, extensive investigations on venom compounds as natural leads for the generation of pharmaceutical products have only been realized in the last decades, after a bradykinin-potentiating peptide isolated from the venom of the Brazialian viper Bothrops jararaca was developed in the 1950s into the first commercial angiotensin I-converting