A depressant insect toxin with a novel analgesic effect from scorpion Buthus martensii Karsch

Biochim Biophys Acta. 2001 Sep 10;1549(1):9-18. doi: 10.1016/s0167-4838(01)00241-2.

Abstract

A new peptide named BmK dITAP3 from scorpion Buthus martensii Karsch (BmK) has been identified to possess a dual bioactivity, a depressant neurotoxicity on insects and an analgesic effect on mice. The bioassays also showed that the peptide was definitely devoid of the neurotoxicity on mammals, which indicated that the analgesic effect of BmK dITAP3 could not be ascribed to the syndromic effects of a mammalian neurotoxicity. BmK dITAP3 exhibited 43.0% inhibition efficiency of the analgesic effect on mice at a dose of 5 mg/kg and the FPU value of 0.5 microg/body (approximately 30 mg) on the fly larvae. The pI value and the molecular mass determined by MALDI-TOF MS for dITAP3 were 6.5 and 6722.7, respectively. Its first 15 N-terminal residues were determined by Edman degradation, based on which the full amino acid sequence was deduced from the cDNA sequence encoding the peptide with 3'-RACE. Circular dichroism and sequence based prediction analyses showed dITAP3 may have a similar molecular scaffold as the most scorpion toxins but with features of the more beta structures and much less of alpha helix. The details of the purification, characterization and sequencing as well as the sequence comparison with other depressant insect toxins and the correlation between the analgesic effect and the insect toxicity will be reported and discussed, respectively.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Analgesics / chemistry
  • Animals
  • Base Sequence
  • Biological Assay
  • Circular Dichroism
  • Cloning, Molecular
  • DNA, Complementary / biosynthesis
  • DNA, Complementary / chemistry
  • Insecta / drug effects
  • Insecta / physiology*
  • Mass Spectrometry
  • Mice
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Protein Structure, Secondary
  • Scorpion Venoms / chemistry*
  • Scorpion Venoms / genetics
  • Scorpion Venoms / isolation & purification

Substances

  • Analgesics
  • DNA, Complementary
  • Scorpion Venoms
  • dITAP3 toxin, Buthus martensii