Abstract
Actinoporins (APs) are a family of pore-forming toxins (PFTs) from sea anemones. These biomolecules exhibit the ability to exist as soluble monomers within an aqueous medium or as constitutively open oligomers in biological membranes. Through their conformational plasticity, actinoporins are considered good candidate molecules to be included for the rational design of molecular tools, such as immunotoxins directed against tumor cells and stochastic biosensors based on nanopores to analyze unique DNA or protein molecules. Additionally, the ability of these proteins to bind to sphingomyelin (SM) facilitates their use for the design of molecular probes to identify SM in the cells. The immunomodulatory activity of actinoporins in liposomal formulations for vaccine development has also been evaluated. In this review, we describe the potential of actinoporins for use in the development of molecular tools that could be used for possible medical and biotechnological applications.
Highlights
Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) represent a group of structurally and functionally diverse molecules and possess the ability to adapt to the environment through conformational changes
One example involves immunotoxins, which are chimeric molecules that consist of a toxic fraction that is responsible for tumor cell damage and a fraction composed of an antibody that is responsible for directing the toxic fraction to a specific target [6,7,8]
Despite the potential exhibited by several bacterial PFTs for the design of immunotoxins, only one immunotoxin that is based on a region from the pore-forming protein of Pseudomonas exotoxin A has been approved by the FDA
Summary
Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) represent a group of structurally and functionally diverse molecules and possess the ability to adapt to the environment through conformational changes. The structural knowledge of the monomeric units and oligomeric forms of actinoporins has increased in recent years, their mechanism of action has not yet been fully described These proteins were found to possess important physicochemical characteristics for the design of molecular tools with possible medical and biotechnological application [16,17,18,19]. As a component of the design of adjuvant tools for vaccine development, actinoporins could act as immunomodulators to enhance the specific cytotoxic cellular response of antigens within various liposomal formulations that could be used in the development of vaccines against intracellular pathogens or in cancer [43] Because of their preference to bind to sphingomyelin, it has been proposed that actinoporins could be a great molecular tool in the analysis of sphingolipid distribution and dynamics in biological membranes [24]. It highlights the developments in actinoporin applications, in the biotechnological and biomedical fields
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