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Physiological demands and signaling associated with snake venom production and storage illustrated by transcriptional analyses of venom glands.

ABSTRACT: Despite the extensive body of research on snake venom, many facets of snake venom systems, such as the physiology and regulation of the venom gland itself, remain virtually unstudied. Here, we use time series gene expression analyses of the rattlesnake venom gland in comparison with several non-venom tissues to characterize physiological and cellular processes associated with venom production and to highlight key distinctions of venom gland cellular and physiological function. We find consistent evidence for activation of stress response pathways in the venom gland, suggesting that mitigation of cellular stress is a crucial component of venom production. Additionally, we demonstrate evidence for an unappreciated degree of cellular and secretory activity in the steady state venom gland relative to other secretory tissues and identify vacuolar ATPases as the likely mechanisms driving acidification of the venom gland lumen during venom production and storage.

SUBMITTER: Perry BW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7582160 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Physiological demands and signaling associated with snake venom production and storage illustrated by transcriptional analyses of venom glands.

Perry Blair W BW Schield Drew R DR Westfall Aundrea K AK Mackessy Stephen P SP Castoe Todd A TA

Scientific reports 20201022 1

Despite the extensive body of research on snake venom, many facets of snake venom systems, such as the physiology and regulation of the venom gland itself, remain virtually unstudied. Here, we use time series gene expression analyses of the rattlesnake venom gland in comparison with several non-venom tissues to characterize physiological and cellular processes associated with venom production and to highlight key distinctions of venom gland cellular and physiological function. We find consistent ...[more]

PMID: 33093509

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Project description:Snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMPs) are a superfamily of zinc-dependent proteases and participate in a number of important biological, physiological and pathophysiological processes. In this work, we simultaneously amplified nine cDNAs encoding different classes of metalloproteinases from glands of four different snake species (Agkistrodon contortrix laticinctus, Crotalus atrox, Crotalus viridis viridis and Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma) by RT-PCR with a pair of primers. Among the encoded metalloproteinases, two enzymes (AclVMP-I and AplVMP-I), three enzymes (CaVMP-II, CvvVMP-II and AplVMP-II) and four enzymes (AclVMP-III, CaVMP-III, CvvVMP-III and AplVMP-III) with the characteristic motif (HEXXHXXGXXH) of metalloproteinase belong to type P-I, P-II and P-III enzymes, respectively. Disintegrin domains of CaVMP-II and CvvVMP-II from two Crotatus snakes contain RGD-motif whereas AplVMP-II from Agkistrodon snake has KGD-motif. Instead of R/KGD-motif within disintegrin domain of SVMP-II enzyme, CaVMP-III, CvvVMP-III and AplVMP-III enzymes contain SECD-motif, while AclVMP-III has DDCD-motif in their corresponding position of disintegrin-like domains. There are 12 Cys amino acids in cysterin-rich domains of each P-III enzyme. Moreover, a disintegrin precursor (AplDis) with RGD-motif also simultaneously amplified from the glands of A.p. leucostoma while amplifying AplVMP-II and AplVMP-III, which indicated that different types of SVMPs and related genes are present in a single species of snake and share a consensus sequence at the 3' and 5' untranslated regions. RT-PCR result also showed that P-III is highly expressed in Crotalus snakes than in Agkistrodon snakes. Aligning the deduced amino acid sequence of these enzymes with other SVMPs from GenBank database indicated that this is the first report on the isolation of cDNAs encoding P-II and P-III enzymes from C.v. viridis and A.p. leucostoma snakes. The availability of these SVMP sequences directly facilitated further studies of structure characterization and diversified function analysis.

Dataset Information

Physiological demands and signaling associated with snake venom production and storage illustrated by transcriptional analyses of venom glands.

Publications

Physiological demands and signaling associated with snake venom production and storage illustrated by transcriptional analyses of venom glands.

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