Abstract

Poisonous organisms are represented in many taxa, including kingdom Animalia. During evolution, animals have developed special organs for production and injection of venoms. Animal venoms are complex mixtures, compositions of which depend on species producing venom. The most known and studied poisonous terrestrial animals are snakes, scorpions and snails. Venomous animals produce a myriad of important pharmacological components. The individual components, or venoms (toxins), are used in ion channel and receptor studies, drug discovery, and formulation of insecticides. Knowing the key clinical applications of venom, the present investigation was carried out to understand the molecular basis of venom toxins of animals like snake (L-amino acid oxidases), cone snail (Contulakin-G) and scorpion (Chlorotoxin) by retrieving the protein sequence information, deducing various physicochemical properties, predicting secondary structural elements, homology modelling and depicting the potent antigenic regions using various bioinformatics tools and soft-wares. Because of their remarkable molecular diversity, venoms are key, albeit challenging, resource for pharmacological discovery that contribute to the development of drugs that act as anti-tumor agents, heart stimulants and therapies for neurological diseases. Venom-informatics is a systematic bioinformatics approach in which classified, consolidated and cleaned venom data are stored into repositories and integrated with advanced bioinformatics tools for the analysis of structure and function of toxins. Venom-informatics complements experimental studies and helps reduce the number of essential experiments.

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 call

Disclaimer: 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.