Abstract
Both venoms and poisonous secretions are complex mixtures that assist in defense, predation, communication, and competition in the animal world. They consist of variable bioactive molecules, such as proteins, peptides, salts and also metabolites. Metabolomics opens up new perspectives for the study of venoms and poisons as it gives an opportunity to investigate their previously unexplored low molecular-weight components. The aim of this article is to summarize the available literature where metabolomic technologies were used for examining the composition of animal venoms and poisons. The paper discusses only the low molecular-weight components of venoms and poisons collected from snakes, spiders, scorpions, toads, frogs, and ants. An overview is given of the analytical strategies used in the analysis of the metabolic content of the samples. We paid special attention to the classes of compounds identified in various venoms and poisons and potential applications of the small molecules (especially bufadienolides) discovered. The issues that should be more effectively addressed in the studies of animal venoms and poisons include challenges related to sample collection and preparation, species-related chemical diversity of compounds building the metabolome and a need of an online database that would enhance identification of small molecule components of these secretions.
Highlights
Animals have developed many mechanisms to adapt to their role as victim or predator
HPLC high-performance liquid chromatography; HPLC-MS high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry; DI-MS direct ionization mass spectrometry; UHPLC-MS ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry; NMR nuclear magnetic resonance; GC-MS gas chromatography-mass spectrometry
The introduction of “omic” technologies has revolutionized the study of venoms and poisonous secretions
Summary
Animals have developed many mechanisms to adapt to their role as victim or predator. One of these adaptations is venom production in specialized glands or cells and its injection into the target animal via a wound. In addition to venomous animals, there are poisonous species that deliver their toxins in a passive way (their body contains the poisonous substance) Both venoms and poisonous secretions are complex mixtures that assist in defense, predation, communication and competition in the animal world [1,2]. Before the introduction of mass spectrometry techniques and bioinformatics, studies of poisonous and venomous secretions were very tedious, required a large number of samples, huge sample volume and time-consuming methodologies. They were limited by the sensitivity of the methods used. Some reports present the venom impact on living organisms at the metabolome level [15,16,17,18]
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