New Approaches in Monitoring Venom of Genus Dendroaspis

Abstract

A novel approach to the study of venoms characterizes and compares the venom structure of genus Dendroaspis presented in this work. The complex molecular structure of individual venoms of genus Dendroaspis was defined graphically as a record of synchronous fluorescence fingerprint and atomic force microscopy. Simple comparison of these methods mentioned above of individual analyzed venom samples will immediately reveal changes in each venom composition. Application of these methods with electrophoresis and total protein concentration are new alternatives that were used for monitoring venom composition in selected snakes. Electrophoretogram of black mamba with very low content of total proteins contained the largest number of separated fractions, whereas synchronous fluorescence analysis showed that the highest endogenous fluorescence was found in the venom of black mamba compared with the venom of green mambas, respectively. Our results confirmed different molecular structure in the venom of the genus Dendroaspis. The practical advantages of the selected techniques are high sensitivity and minimal quantity of venom required for the assay. These novel methods show that the least toxic Dendroaspis intermedius contained the greatest amount of proteins contrary to Dendroaspis polylepis with a considerably lower content of proteins but the highest toxic bioactivity.