Publications by authors named "Diego Dantas Almeida"
Venom is a key adaptive innovation in snakes, and how nonvenom genes were co-opted to become part of the toxin arsenal is a significant evolutionary question. While this process has been investigated through the phylogenetic reconstruction of toxin sequences, evidence provided by the genomic context of toxin genes remains less explored. To investigate the process of toxin recruitment, we sequenced the genome of , a clinically relevant pitviper.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe complete mitochondrial genome, containing 17,526 bp, was determined from the pitviper . It is the first mitogenome for the most medically important genus of snake in Latin America. This mitogenome has common snake mitochondrial features such as a duplicated control region that has nearly identical sequences at two different locations of the mitogenome and a translocation of tRNA-Leu (UUR).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMolecular approaches for structural characterization of a new potassium channel blocker from Tityus stigmurus venom: cDNA cloning, homology modeling, dynamic simulations and docking.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun
January 2013
Article Synopsis
- Potassium channels play a crucial role in various physiological processes, including maintaining resting membrane potential, regulating cardiac and neuronal activity, and facilitating neurotransmitter release.
- The venom from the Tityus stigmurus scorpion can cause severe symptoms in humans and contains peptides that block potassium channels, particularly from the α-KTx and β-KTx subfamilies, with the latter being less characterized.
- Research on T. stigmurus has identified a new β-KTx peptide, TstKMK, which is linked to the scorpion's toxins, and its 3D structure has been modeled to understand how it interacts with potassium channels, particularly through docking simulations with a specific rat potassium channel.