PROTEOMIC PROFILING OF CONUS REGIUS VENOM

The genus Conus includes over 900 species of venomous marine mollusks known as cone snails. Their venoms are among the most powerful ones described so far and are mainly composed of bioactive peptides named conopeptides. The conotoxins – conopeptides rich in disulfide bonds – bind with great specificity to ion channels and membrane receptors, interfering with crucial physiological processes. These molecules have remarkable structural stability, which results in an immense, still unexplored biotechnological and therapeutic potential. The identification of new conopeptides has been considerably accelerated by the use of omic techniques. In this work, we employed three proteomic approaches to study the venom of Conus regius, a worm-eating species found in the Brazilian coast.