Abstract
Venomous animals use their venoms as tools for defense or predation. These venoms are complex mixtures, mainly enriched of proteic toxins or peptides with several, and different, biological activities. In general, spider venom is rich in biologically active molecules that are useful in experimental protocols for pharmacology, biochemistry, cell biology and immunology, as well as putative tools for biotechnology and industries. Spider venoms have recently garnered much attention from several research groups worldwide. Brown spider (Loxosceles genus) venom is enriched in low molecular mass proteins (5–40 kDa). Although their venom is produced in minute volumes (a few microliters), and contain only tens of micrograms of protein, the use of techniques based on molecular biology and proteomic analysis has afforded rational projects in the area and permitted the discovery and identification of a great number of novel toxins. The brown spider phospholipase-D family is undoubtedly the most investigated and characterized, although other important toxins, such as low molecular mass insecticidal peptides, metalloproteases and hyaluronidases have also been identified and featured in literature. The molecular pathways of the action of these toxins have been reported and brought new insights in the field of biotechnology. Herein, we shall see how recent reports describing discoveries in the area of brown spider venom have expanded biotechnological uses of molecules identified in these venoms, with special emphasis on the construction of a cDNA library for venom glands, transcriptome analysis, proteomic projects, recombinant expression of different proteic toxins, and finally structural descriptions based on crystallography of toxins.
Highlights
This study proved that metalloproteases are components of L. intermedia and L. laeta venoms, and eliminated the possibility that electrostimulated venom could have been contaminated with digestive hydrolytic enzymes during extraction [53]
This study described the presence of a gene family of astacin-like toxins in three Loxosceles species suggesting that these molecules will be found in all South America Loxosceles species [29]
Research in brown spider venom toxins has increased over recent years, but the challenges and opportunities are enormous
Summary
The spiders of the Loxosceles genus, commonly denoted as brown spiders, belong to the family. Strong evidences show that the genera Loxosceles and Sicarius are old, having originated from a common sicariid ancestor and diversified on Western Gondwana, before the separation of the African and South American continents Both sicariid genera are diverse in Africa and South/Central America. Loxosceles spiders have a violin-shaped pattern on the dorsal surface of their cephalothorax, vary in length from 1 cm to 5 cm, including legs, and have six eyes arranged in non-touching pairs in a U-shaped pattern (Figure 1B). This positioning of eyes has been described as the best means of identifying these brown spiders [4,5,6,7,8]. Venom can be harvested directly from venom glands: the removed glands are washed in PBS and the venom is obtained by gentle compression of the glands
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