Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans

Prashanth, Jutty Rajan; Dutertre, Sebastien; Rai, Subash Kumar; Lewis, Richard J.

doi:10.3390/toxins14030226

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Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans

¹

Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia

²

IBMM, Université Montpellier, CNRS, ENSCM, 34095 Montpellier, France

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Toxins 2022, 14(3), 226; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14030226

Submission received: 17 February 2022 / Revised: 10 March 2022 / Accepted: 16 March 2022 / Published: 19 March 2022

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Predatory and Defensive Venom Peptides)

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Abstract

The defensive use of cone snail venom is hypothesised to have first arisen in ancestral worm-hunting snails and later repurposed in a compartmentalised venom duct to facilitate the dietary shift to molluscivory and piscivory. Consistent with its placement in a basal lineage, we demonstrate that the C. distans venom gland lacked distinct compartmentalisation. Transcriptomics revealed C. distans expressed a wide range of structural classes, with inhibitory cysteine knot (ICK)-containing peptides dominating. To better understand the evolution of the venom gland compartmentalisation, we compared C. distans to C. planorbis, the earliest diverging species from which a defence-evoked venom has been obtained, and fish-hunting C. geographus from the Gastridium subgenus that injects distinct defensive and predatory venoms. These comparisons support the hypothesis that venom gland compartmentalisation arose in worm-hunting species and enabled repurposing of venom peptides to facilitate the dietary shift from vermivory to molluscivory and piscivory in more recently diverged cone snail lineages.

Keywords: proteomics; transcriptomics; evolution; defensive venom; conotoxins

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MDPI and ACS Style

Prashanth, J.R.; Dutertre, S.; Rai, S.K.; Lewis, R.J. Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans. Toxins 2022, 14, 226. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14030226

AMA Style

Prashanth JR, Dutertre S, Rai SK, Lewis RJ. Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans. Toxins. 2022; 14(3):226. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14030226

Chicago/Turabian Style

Prashanth, Jutty Rajan, Sebastien Dutertre, Subash Kumar Rai, and Richard J. Lewis. 2022. "Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans" Toxins 14, no. 3: 226. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14030226

APA Style

Prashanth, J. R., Dutertre, S., Rai, S. K., & Lewis, R. J. (2022). Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans. Toxins, 14(3), 226. https://doi.org/10.3390/toxins14030226

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Venomics Reveals a Non-Compartmentalised Venom Gland in the Early Diverged Vermivorous Conus distans

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