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"Molecular stability, small size, solubility, intravenous delivery, and no immunogenic response make conotoxins excellent blockade-therapy candidates," said Andrew V. Venom peptides from cone snails has the potential to treat countless diseases using blockage therapies. Similarly, mitigation of emerging diseases like AIDS and COVID-19 also could benefit from conotoxins as potential inhibitors of protein-protein interactions as treatment. Results, published in the Journal of Proteomics, expand the pharmacological reach of conotoxins/ conopeptides by revealing their ability to disrupt protein-protein and protein-polysaccharide interactions that directly contribute to the disease. The study provides important leads toward the development of novel and cost-effective anti-adhesion or blockade-therapy pharmaceuticals aimed at counteracting the pathology of severe malaria. Schmidt College of Science and the Chemical Sciences Division, National Institute of Standard and Technology, United States Department of Commerce, suggests that these conotoxins could potentially treat malaria. With venom made of thousands of substances, cone snails have plenty to offer if we just keep looking-carefully.Using venom from the Conus nux, a species of sea snail, a first-of-its-kind study from Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine in collaboration with FAU's Charles E. Different cone snail species have distinct venom cocktails, likely including unique insulin types and other valuable molecules. “That's why it's good to have a repertoire,” Safavi-Hemami says. Now the team is further investigating the hybrid's safety and stability-challenges for nonclumping insulin designs that this strangely shaped molecule might overcome. “This opens up possibilities for synthetic insulins,” Strauss adds. These findings can help better illuminate how insulins work in general, says Mike Strauss, a biochemist at McGill University, who was not involved in the study. When Safavi-Hemami showed the new snail insulin to her collaborator Danny Hung-Chieh Chou of Stanford University, “he said, ‘It's been done,’” Safavi-Hemami recalls, “but when we looked, the biology was so different.” They used cutting-edge imaging technology to clearly visualize how the new hybrid attaches to a cell's insulin receptor and changes its shape-a detail that was unknown about the previous hybrid. Instead it has a unique elongated region that binds to receptors but does not produce clumps. Conveniently, Kinoshita's cone snail insulin lacks this part altogether.
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The human insulin molecule's clumping region is also crucial for binding to cells' receptors, and this region is truncated in the geographer cone snail's insulin.
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They then checked other species and found the Kinoshita's cone snail produced insulin that acts in a never-before-seen manner. The researchers had performed a similar feat in 2020 using insulin from the geographer cone snail. The researchers incorporated unique regions of the molecule into human insulin, creating a hybrid that lacks the human version's clumping region. The cone snail could offer insight into creating nonclumping insulin for faster diabetes treatment.įor a study in Nature Chemical Biology, University of Copenhagen biologist Helena Safavi-Hemami and her colleagues probed the peculiar anatomy of the Kinoshita's cone snail's insulin. It tends to form clumps, which stabilize the substance for easier storage in the body-but it cannot act until these clumps dissolve. But studying how this substance hijacks key bodily systems so efficiently may inspire lifesaving medications: cone snail venom includes insulin, a hormone that helps cells metabolize blood glucose and that many people with diabetes need to routinely inject.Īnd there is something special about cone snail insulin, which quickly drops their prey animals' blood sugar.
#Cone snail venom full
Grabbing a live cone snail while collecting seashells could get you jabbed with a fanglike dart full of potentially fatal-and incredibly fast-acting-venom.