Diversity of Conopeptides and Their Precursor Genes of Conus Litteratus

Marine Drugs

Sulan Luo¹  Xinjia Li¹  Dongting Zhangsun¹  Wanyi Chen¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Tropical Biological Resources of Ministry of Education, School of Life and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Key Laboratory for Marine Drugs of Haikou, Hainan University, Haikou Hainan 570228, China;

关键词: conotoxin;    diversity;    superfamily;    cysteine framework;    gene structure;   

DOI  :  10.3390/md18090464

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The venom of various Conus species is composed of a rich variety of unique bioactive peptides, commonly referred to as conotoxins (conopeptides). Most conopeptides have specific receptors or ion channels as physiologically relevant targets. In this paper, high-throughput transcriptome sequencing was performed to analyze putative conotoxin transcripts from the venom duct of a vermivorous cone snail species, Conus litteratus native to the South China Sea. A total of 128 putative conotoxins were identified, most of them belonging to 22 known superfamilies, with 43 conotoxins being regarded as belonging to new superfamilies. Notably, the M superfamily was the most abundant in conotoxins among the known superfamilies. A total of 15 known cysteine frameworks were also described. The largest proportion of cysteine frameworks were VI/VII (C-C-CC-C-C), IX (C-C-C-C-C-C) and XIV (C-C-C-C). In addition, five novel cysteine patterns were also discovered. Simple sequence repeat detection results showed that di-nucleotide was the major type of repetition, and the codon usage bias results indicated that the codon usage bias of the conotoxin genes was weak, but the M, O1, O2 superfamilies differed in codon preference. Gene cloning indicated that there was no intron in conotoxins of the B1- or J superfamily, one intron with 1273–1339 bp existed in a mature region of the F superfamily, which is different from the previously reported gene structure of conotoxins from other superfamilies. This study will enhance our understanding of conotoxin diversity, and the new conotoxins discovered in this paper will provide more potential candidates for the development of pharmacological probes and marine peptide drugs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown