Laboratório de Hemostase e Venenos-Instituto de Bioquímica Médica, Leopoldo de Meis (IBqM) and Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia de Biologia Estrutural e Bioimagem (Inbeb)-Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro 21941-902, Brazil.
Protein Advanced Biochemistry (PAB), Instituto de Bioquímica Médica Leopoldo de Meis (IBqM) and Centro Nacional de Biologia Estrutural e Bioimagem (CENABIO), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21941-902, Brazil.
Toxins (Basel). 2021 Apr 30;13(5):328. doi: 10.3390/toxins13050328.
Studies on 3FTxs around the world are showing the amazing diversity in these proteins both in structure and function. In Brazil, we have not realized the broad variety of their amino acid sequences and probable diversified structures and targets. In this context, this work aims to conduct an in silico systematic study on available 3FTxs found in Micrurus species from Brazil. We elaborated a specific guideline for this toxin family. First, we grouped them according to their structural homologue predicted by HHPred server and further curated manually. For each group, we selected one sequence and constructed a representative structural model. By looking at conserved features and comparing with the information available in the literature for this toxin family, we managed to point to potential biological functions. In parallel, the phylogenetic relationship was estimated for our database by maximum likelihood analyses and a phylogenetic tree was constructed including the homologous 3FTx previously characterized. Our results highlighted an astonishing diversity inside this family of toxins, showing some groups with expected functional similarities to known 3FTxs, and pointing out others with potential novel roles and perhaps structures. Moreover, this classification guideline may be useful to aid future studies on these abundant toxins.
全球范围内对 3FTxs 的研究表明，这些蛋白质在结构和功能上都具有惊人的多样性。在巴西，我们还没有意识到它们的氨基酸序列的多样性以及可能的多样化结构和靶标。在这种情况下，本工作旨在对巴西 Micrurus 物种中已发现的 3FTxs 进行基于计算机的系统研究。我们为此毒素家族制定了一个专门的指导方针。首先，我们根据 HHPred 服务器预测的结构同源物对它们进行分组，并进一步手动整理。对于每个组，我们选择一个序列并构建一个代表性的结构模型。通过观察保守特征并与该毒素家族的现有文献信息进行比较，我们设法指出了潜在的生物学功能。同时，我们通过最大似然分析对我们的数据库进行了系统发育关系估计，并构建了包括先前表征的同源 3FTx 的系统发育树。我们的结果突出了该毒素家族内部的惊人多样性，表明一些组与已知的 3FTxs 具有预期的功能相似性，并指出其他组可能具有新的作用和结构。此外，这种分类指南可能有助于未来对这些丰富的毒素进行研究。
