Categorizing Molecular Features of Venom Toxins UsingBioinformatics Tools

Abstract

Poisonous organisms are represented in many taxa, including kingdom Animalia. During evolution, animals have developed special organs for
production and injection of venoms. Animal venoms are complex mixtures, compositions of which depend on species producing venom. The most
known and studied poisonous terrestrial animals are snakes, scorpions and snails. Venomous animals produce a myriad of important pharmacological
components. The individual components, or venoms (toxins), are used in ion channel and receptor studies, drug discovery, and formulation of
insecticides. Knowing the key clinical applications of venom, the present investigation was carried out to understand the molecular basis of venom
toxins of animals like snake (L-amino acid oxidases), cone snail (Contulakin-G) and scorpion (Chlorotoxin) by retrieving the protein sequence
information, deducing various physicochemical properties, predicting secondary structural elements, homology modelling and depicting the potent antigenic regions using various bioinformatics tools and soft-wares. Because of their remarkable molecular diversity, venoms are key, albeit challenging, resource for pharmacological discovery that contribute to the development of drugs that act as anti-tumor agents, heart stimulants and therapies for neurological diseases. Venom-informatics is a systematic bioinformatics approach in which classified, consolidated and cleaned venom data are stored into repositories and integrated with advanced bioinformatics tools for the analysis of structure and function of toxins. Venom-informatics complements experimental studies and helps reduce the number of essential experiments.