Variability of sodium channel toxins in Mesobuthus thersites Advised toolkit for comprehensive venomics

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Variability of sodium channel toxins in Mesobuthus thersites Advised toolkit for comprehensive venomics Abstract Natural venoms constitute vast combinatorial libraries of ion channel ligands with unprecedented properties including high affinity and selectivity. Scorpion venoms in particular are abundant in sodium and potassium channel ligands representing small proteins or peptides, which are traditionally studied by transcriptomics and proteomics approaches. However, a universal algorithm to pursue the examination of multicomponent peptide-rich mixtures such as venoms is lacking. Here we present a general scheme to the analysis of scorpion toxin arsenal with focus on sodium channel ligands. We explored the venom of the Central Asian scorpion Mesobuthus thersites using venom gland transcriptomics and three proteomic methods. We compared traditional automated annotation by Blast2GO with our custom approach based on regular expressions. We found that the traditional annotation is compro...

Sulfated Fucosyl-Guanosines: Understudied Compounds from Spider Venom

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Sulfated Fucosyl-Guanosines: Understudied Compounds from Spider Venom

Abstract

Low molecular mass compounds are the least understood among the components of spider venom. Sulfated fucosyl-guanosines originally detected from Hololena curta McCook are unique and rarely found in nature. While their synthetic counterparts are widely used as antibiotics. The present work compiles the current knowledge of these molecules, exploring their potential biogenetic origin. Additional topics highlight biochemistry and their significance as natural products with potential for pharmaceutical developments.
Carvajal, M. A., & Victor Fajardo, M. (2026). Sulfated Fucosyl-Guanosines: Understudied Compounds from Spider Venom. Toxicon, 109033. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxicon.2026.109033