Abstract
Fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution, snake venoms have frightened but also fascinated humanity and nowadays they constitute potential resources for drug development, therapeutics and antivenoms. The continuous progress of mass spectrometry techniques and latest advances in proteomics workflows enabled toxinologists to decipher venoms by modern omics technologies, so-called ‘venomics’. A tremendous upsurge reporting on snake venom proteomes could be observed. Within this review we focus on the highly venomous and widely distributed subfamily of Viperinae (Serpentes: Viperidae). A detailed public literature database search was performed (2003–2020) and we extensively reviewed all compositional venom studies of the so-called Old-World Vipers. In total, 54 studies resulted in 89 venom proteomes. The Viperinae venoms are dominated by four major, four secondary, six minor and several rare toxin families and peptides, respectively. The multitude of different venomics approaches complicates the comparison of venom composition datasets and therefore we differentiated between non-quantitative and three groups of quantitative workflows. The resulting direct comparisons within these groups show remarkable differences on the intra- and interspecies level across genera with a focus on regional differences. In summary, the present compilation is the first comprehensive up-to-date database on Viperinae venom proteomes and differentiating between analytical methods and workflows.
Highlights
Venoms are one of the major traits directly associated with snakes, only a small number of the over 3800 different species are highly venomous
Around 10% of all snakes belong to the viper family of Viperidae, which is grouped into three subfamilies with the clade of Azemiopinae and Crotalinae (‘pit vipers’) being sister to the Viperinae subfamily, the so called ‘true vipers’ or ‘pit-less vipers’ [1,2,3]
While these methods only allow for a relative quantification of venom components, others like inductive coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometry (MS) can be used for an absolute quantification, using the statistical abundance of cysteine sulfur in most venom proteins [54,55]
Summary
Venoms are one of the major traits directly associated with snakes, only a small number of the over 3800 different species are highly venomous. The TD approach is on the rise and allows precise toxin identification directly from crude venoms and in this context the applicability of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) MS most likely will constitute a decisive step in the coming years [49,53]. While these methods only allow for a relative quantification of venom components, others like inductive coupled plasma (ICP) MS can be used for an absolute quantification, using the statistical abundance of cysteine sulfur in most venom proteins [54,55]. We close this gap by providing a comprehensive compilation of recent venom compositions of Old World vipers and related compositional variations
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