Journal
TOXINS
Volume 14, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/toxins14030226
Keywords
proteomics; transcriptomics; evolution; defensive venom; conotoxins
Categories
Funding
- Australian Research Council [DP170104792]
- National Health and Medical Research Council [APP1119056]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The compartmentalization of the venom gland in cone snails enabled the repurposing of venom peptides to facilitate the dietary shift from vermivory to molluscivory and piscivory.
The defensive use of cone snail venom is hypothesised to have first arisen in ancestral worm-hunting snails and later repurposed in a compartmentalised venom duct to facilitate the dietary shift to molluscivory and piscivory. Consistent with its placement in a basal lineage, we demonstrate that the C. distans venom gland lacked distinct compartmentalisation. Transcriptomics revealed C. distans expressed a wide range of structural classes, with inhibitory cysteine knot (ICK)-containing peptides dominating. To better understand the evolution of the venom gland compartmentalisation, we compared C. distans to C. planorbis, the earliest diverging species from which a defence-evoked venom has been obtained, and fish-hunting C. geographus from the Gastridium subgenus that injects distinct defensive and predatory venoms. These comparisons support the hypothesis that venom gland compartmentalisation arose in worm-hunting species and enabled repurposing of venom peptides to facilitate the dietary shift from vermivory to molluscivory and piscivory in more recently diverged cone snail lineages.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available