Harnessing snake venom cardiotoxins for antimicrobial peptide discovery

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  Harnessing snake venom cardiotoxins for antimicrobial peptide discovery Abstract Snake venoms are a rich source of bioactive molecules with considerable potential for drug discovery. Cardiotoxins (CTXs) from cobras ( Naja spp.) are membrane-active venom proteins and promising templates for antimicrobial peptide development. Here, we combined two computational toxin-mining strategies to identify antimicrobial peptide candidates from CTXs. First, AMPA-guided sequence mining was used to detect encrypted antimicrobial regions within CTX sequences. Second, sequence alignment and consensus-sequence analysis were employed to generate peptides from a conserved CTX scaffold. Candidate peptides were prioritised using multiple machine learning- and deep learning-based antimicrobial peptide prediction tools, resulting in fourteen CTX-inspired peptides, including two modified derivatives of CTX-p5. Antimicrobial screening showed limited activity across the peptide panel, with CTX-p5 exhibiti...

Elevational patterns and assembly processes of centipede and spider diversity on Changbai Mountain, China

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Elevational patterns and assembly processes of centipede and spider diversity on Changbai Mountain, China

Abstract

Mountain elevational gradients provide natural experiments for testing how biodiversity responds to strong and predictable climatic change, yet soil predatory invertebrates remain poorly studied. Here, we investigated centipede (Chilopoda) and spider (Araneae) assemblages along an elevational gradient on Changbai Mountain, northeast China, to evaluate how elevation structures taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity. Across 64 plots spanning eight elevations (800–1850 m), we quantified taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic α- and β-diversity. Functional structure was characterized using four traits for centipedes and eight for spiders, species-level phylogenies were reconstructed from COI sequences, and β-diversity was partitioned into turnover and nestedness. We further used null-model standardization to test whether β-diversity deviated from stochastic expectations and assessed the effects of climate and litter chemistry. Taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic α-diversity all declined significantly with elevation in both taxa, with generally steeper declines in spiders. Community composition diverged strongly among elevations across all three facets, and β-diversity increased with elevational distance. Taxonomic β-diversity was turnover-dominated in both taxa, indicating that elevational differentiation mainly reflected species replacement. Functional β-diversity showed a stronger nestedness component, suggesting contraction of functional trait space toward higher elevations. Phylogenetic β-diversity differed between taxa: spiders were mainly turnover-dominated, whereas centipedes showed a stronger nestedness component. Standardized effect sizes revealed non-random structuring in taxonomic and phylogenetic β-diversity, whereas functional non-randomness was more evident in centipedes. Annual mean temperature, annual mean precipitation and litter pH were the most consistent predictors of both α- and β-diversity. However, litter element effects differed between taxa: centipede β-diversity was associated mainly with litter C, N and C/N, whereas spider β-diversity was more closely related to litter P, C/P and N/P. These results show that elevation filters species, ecological strategies and evolutionary lineages in forest floor predator communities in facet- and guild-dependent ways.
Wan, Z., Wu, Y., Zhang, P., Ma, H., Liu, M., Xie, Z., Wu, D., & Scheu, S. (2026). Elevational patterns and assembly processes of centipede and spider diversity on Changbai Mountain, China. Geoderma, 474, 118039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2026.118039