A Deeper Examination of Thorellius atrox Scorpion Venom Components with Omic Technologies

This communication reports a further examination of venom gland transcripts and venom composition of the Mexican scorpion Thorellius atrox using RNA-seq and tandem mass spectrometry. The RNA-seq, which was performed with the Illumina protocol, yielded more than 20,000 assembled transcripts. Following a database search and annotation strategy, 160 transcripts were identified, potentially coding for venom components. A novel sequence was identified that potentially codes for a peptide with similarity to spider ω-agatoxins, which act on voltage-gated calcium channels, not known before to exist in scorpion venoms. Analogous transcripts were found in other scorpion species. They could represent members of a new scorpion toxin family, here named omegascorpins. The mass fingerprint by LC-MS identified 135 individual venom components, five of which matched with the theoretical masses of putative peptides translated from the transcriptome. The LC-MS/MS de novo sequencing allowed to reconstruct and identify 42 proteins encoded by assembled transcripts, thus validating the transcriptome analysis. Earlier studies conducted with this scorpion venom permitted the identification of only twenty putative venom components. The present work performed with more powerful and modern omic technologies demonstrates the capacity of accomplishing a deeper characterization of scorpion venom components and the identification of novel molecules with potential applications in biomedicine and the study of ion channel physiology

Additional file 1: of Identification of reaction organization patterns that naturally cluster enzymatic transformations

Table S1. List of the reactions split by only the count rule or by the count rule in some step of division. Table S2. Representation of the CTS in a string and tree structure format. The first column, shows the CTS ID; second column represents the reaction split in a string; third column shows the graphical (node-edges), representation. Figure S1. CTS vs EC_two_digits comparison by the False Discovery Rate. Figure S2. CTS vs EC_three_digits comparison by the False Discovery Rate. (PDF 3439 kb