Belonging to the Viperidae family, are widely distributed in South America, tropical savanna ecoregion (Cerrado) of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay with medical importance in Brazil. Accidents caused by this species have a rapid local action with the development of tissue inflammation, causing erythema, pain, and increased clotting time, which can culminate in gangrene or tissue necrosis. venom has a rich composition that remains underexplored, which is of utmost importance, both for elucidating the envenoming process and the vast library of new bioactive molecules kind of venom can offer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMar Drugs
June 2018
Marine invertebrates, such as sponges, tunicates and cnidarians (zoantharians and scleractinian corals), form functional assemblages, known as holobionts, with numerous microbes. This type of species-specific symbiotic association can be a repository of myriad valuable low molecular weight organic compounds, bioactive peptides and enzymes. The zoantharian (Cnidaria: Anthozoa) is one such example of a marine holobiont that inhabits the coastal reefs of the tropical Atlantic coast and is an interesting source of secondary metabolites and biologically active polypeptides.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrotamine is a highly cationic; cysteine rich, cross-linked, low molecular mass cell penetrating peptide (CPP) from the venom of the South American rattlesnake. Potential application of crotamine in biomedicine may require its large-scale purification. To overcome difficulties related with the purification of natural crotamine (nCrot) we aimed in the present study to synthesize and characterize a crotamine analog (sCrot) as well investigate its CPP activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToxins have been shown to have many biological functions and to constitute a rich source of drugs and biotechnological tools. We focus on toxins that not only have a specific activity, but also contain residues responsible for transmembrane penetration, which can be considered bioportides-a class of cell-penetrating peptides that are also intrinsically bioactive. Bioportides are potential tools in pharmacology and biotechnology as they help deliver substances and nanoparticles to intracellular targets.
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