Abstract
Peptide toxins synthesized by venomous animals have been extensively studied in the last decades. To be useful to the scientific community, this knowledge has been stored, annotated and made easy to retrieve by several databases. The aim of this article is to present what type of information users can access from each database. ArachnoServer and ConoServer focus on spider toxins and cone snail toxins, respectively. UniProtKB, a generalist protein knowledgebase, has an animal toxin-dedicated annotation program that includes toxins from all venomous animals. Finally, the ATDB metadatabase compiles data and annotations from other databases and provides toxin ontology.
Highlights
Animals have developed different strategies to capture the prey on which they feed and various means to defend themselves from predators
We describe how the knowledge on animal toxins is presented in the currently available databases
Close to half of the toxin sequences displayed in UniProtKB come from the translations of coding sequences (CDSs) submitted to the EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ nucleotide sequence resources
Summary
Animals have developed different strategies to capture the prey on which they feed and various means to defend themselves from predators Venomous animals, such as snakes, scorpions, spiders, jellyfish, hymenopterans (ants, wasps and bees), cone snails, sea anemones, lizards, centipedes, and Toxins 2010, 2 the platypus are equipped with injection devices (spines, fangs, stingers, hypostomes, spurs, harpoons) that permit the active use of venom in predation. Poisonous animals, such as some mammals, toads, ticks, or worms, which only produce toxic substances for defensive purposes, lack such organs [1]. While it has been proposed that all proteins found in venom be called ‘toxin’, we will consider only those exhibiting toxic activities
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
