Grupo de Investigación Biología y Ecología de Artrópodos (BEA), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad del Tolima, Altos de Santa Helena, Ibagué 730001, Colombia.
Centro Nacional de Secuenciación Genómica (CNSG), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín 050010, Colombia.
Toxins (Basel). 2023 Jun 30;15(7):429. doi: 10.3390/toxins15070429.
The wandering spider, , is one of Colombia's most active nocturnal arthropod predators of vertebrates and invertebrates. Its venom has been a relevant subject of study in the last two decades. However, the scarcity of transcriptomic data for the species limits our knowledge of the distinct components present in its venom for linking the mainly neurotoxic effects of the spider venom to a particular molecular target. The transcriptome of the venom gland was analyzed to understand the effect of different diets or sex and the impact of these variables on the composition of the venom. We sequenced venom glands obtained from ten males and ten females from three diet treatments: (i) invertebrate: , (ii) vertebrate: , and (iii) mixed ( + ). Of 17,354 assembled transcripts from all samples, 65 transcripts relating to venom production differed between males and females. Among them, 36 were classified as neurotoxins, 14 as serine endopeptidases, 11 as other proteins related to venom production, three as metalloprotease toxins, and one as a venom potentiator. There were no differences in transcripts across the analyzed diets, but when considering the effect of diets on differences between the sexes, 59 transcripts were differentially expressed. Our findings provide essential information on toxins differentially expressed that can be related to sex and the plasticity of the diet of and thus can be used as a reference for venomics of other wandering spider species.
游走蛛是哥伦比亚最活跃的夜间节肢动物掠食者之一，以脊椎动物和无脊椎动物为食。在过去的二十年里，它的毒液一直是相关研究的主题。然而，由于该物种的转录组数据稀缺，我们对其毒液中存在的不同成分的了解有限，无法将蜘蛛毒液的主要神经毒性作用与特定的分子靶标联系起来。本研究分析了 的毒液腺转录组，以了解不同饮食或性别的影响，以及这些变量对毒液成分的影响。我们对来自三种饮食处理的 10 只雄性和 10 只雌性的毒液腺进行了测序：（i）无脊椎动物： ，（ii）脊椎动物： ，和（iii）混合（+）。在所有样本的 17354 个组装转录本中，有 65 个与毒液产生相关的转录本在雄性和雌性之间存在差异。其中，36 个被归类为神经毒素，14 个为丝氨酸内肽酶，11 个为与毒液产生相关的其他蛋白质，3 个为金属蛋白酶毒素，1 个为毒液增效剂。分析的饮食中没有转录本的差异，但当考虑饮食对性别差异的影响时，有 59 个转录本表现出差异表达。我们的研究结果提供了有关差异表达毒素的重要信息，这些毒素可以与性别和 的饮食可塑性相关，因此可以作为其他游走蛛物种毒理学的参考。
