Venomous snails: One slip, and you're dead...
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Toxinology of Marine Venomous Snails
A surprisingly large number of sea snail species are venomous. Cone snail venoms are produced in a lengthy tubular duct from a complex venom gland and form a cocktail of many toxins, particularly conotoxins which have high potency and specificity for their target specific receptors. They inhibit various channels, neuromuscular receptors or hormones of the victim, and interfere in the transmitte...
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Actinomycetes can be symbionts in diverse organisms, including both plants and animals. Some actinomycetes benefit their host by producing small molecule secondary metabolites; the resulting symbioses are often developmentally complex. Actinomycetes associated with three cone snails were studied. Cone snails are venomous tropical marine gastropods which have been extensively examined because of...
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The 500 different species of venomous cone snails (genus Conus) use small, highly structured peptides (conotoxins) for interacting with prey, predators, and competitors. These peptides are produced by translating mRNA from many genes belonging to only a few gene superfamilies. Each translation product is processed to yield a great diversity of different mature toxin peptides (approximately 50,0...
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Venoms of predatory marine gastropods of the genus Conus show amazing levels of interspecific diversity and are comprised of a cocktail of peptide neurotoxins, termed conotoxins, that are encoded by large gene families. Conotoxin gene family evolution is characterized by gene duplications and high rates of nonsynonymous substitution among paralogues; yet, what controls the differentiation of ve...
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HEMICAL COMPOUNDS derived from living organisms are similar to non-biological substances in that their composition and structure can be characterized, and many can be directly synthesized by standard chemical methods. However, biological compounds are fundamentally different in that each has an underlying evolutionary history. We describe several compounds from an unusual source, the venoms of ...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Nature
سال: 2004
ISSN: 0028-0836,1476-4679
DOI: 10.1038/429798a