Department of Cell Biology, Federal University of Paraná, CEP 81531-980 Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Toxins (Basel). 2011 Mar;3(3):309-44. doi: 10.3390/toxins3030309. Epub 2011 Mar 22.
Venomous animals use their venoms as tools for defense or predation. These venoms are complex mixtures, mainly enriched of proteic toxins or peptides with several, and different, biological activities. In general, spider venom is rich in biologically active molecules that are useful in experimental protocols for pharmacology, biochemistry, cell biology and immunology, as well as putative tools for biotechnology and industries. Spider venoms have recently garnered much attention from several research groups worldwide. Brown spider (Loxosceles genus) venom is enriched in low molecular mass proteins (5-40 kDa). Although their venom is produced in minute volumes (a few microliters), and contain only tens of micrograms of protein, the use of techniques based on molecular biology and proteomic analysis has afforded rational projects in the area and permitted the discovery and identification of a great number of novel toxins. The brown spider phospholipase-D family is undoubtedly the most investigated and characterized, although other important toxins, such as low molecular mass insecticidal peptides, metalloproteases and hyaluronidases have also been identified and featured in literature. The molecular pathways of the action of these toxins have been reported and brought new insights in the field of biotechnology. Herein, we shall see how recent reports describing discoveries in the area of brown spider venom have expanded biotechnological uses of molecules identified in these venoms, with special emphasis on the construction of a cDNA library for venom glands, transcriptome analysis, proteomic projects, recombinant expression of different proteic toxins, and finally structural descriptions based on crystallography of toxins.
有毒动物将毒液用作防御或捕食的工具。这些毒液是复杂的混合物，主要富含蛋白质毒素或肽，具有多种不同的生物学活性。一般来说，蜘蛛毒液富含具有生物学活性的分子，这些分子在药理学、生物化学、细胞生物学和免疫学的实验方案中很有用，也是生物技术和工业的潜在工具。蜘蛛毒液最近引起了全球许多研究小组的关注。棕色蜘蛛（Loxosceles 属）毒液富含低分子量蛋白质（5-40 kDa）。尽管它们的毒液产量很少（几微升），且仅含有数十微克蛋白质，但基于分子生物学和蛋白质组学分析的技术的应用为该领域提供了合理的项目，并允许发现和鉴定大量新毒素。棕色蜘蛛磷脂酶-D 家族无疑是研究和表征最多的家族，尽管其他重要的毒素，如低分子量杀虫肽、金属蛋白酶和透明质酸酶，也已在文献中被鉴定和描述。这些毒素的作用分子途径已被报道，并为生物技术领域带来了新的见解。在此，我们将看到最近描述的棕色蜘蛛毒液领域的发现报告如何扩展了这些毒液中鉴定出的分子的生物技术用途，特别强调构建毒液腺的 cDNA 文库、转录组分析、蛋白质组学项目、不同蛋白质毒素的重组表达，以及最后基于毒素晶体学的结构描述。
