Venomics A Treasure for Drug Discovery and the...

Based on definition venomics is the study of the proteome of the venoms. Venomics is a research program started by International society of Toxicology. The aim of this program is to analyze and examine the genomic background of venomic animals using new technologies based on genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics. Venomics throughout their studies showed us that venomous animals can be dangerous and deadly but sometimes can be a treasure of substances and molecules that can be beneficial for drug discovery and the development of strategies against envenomation (Menez, 2006). An enormous amount of animals have special glandular organs that are able to secret toxic substances, these substances are called venoms. The venoms have†¦show more content†¦Thus this variability brings up difficulties in the purifications of such bioactive substances. Mass spectrometry allows venomics projects to study the variability in venoms in species like scorpions, cone snails, spiders and snakes. Venomic studies showed that venoms have important biological properties as they act on numerous molecular receptors and target neurons, the synapse, axons and the neuromuscular junctions thus targeting nervous system by regulating the propagations and the generation of action potentials. Extracting all these information about their biological properties, venomics focused on the selectictivity of venoms to specific receptors that are associated with various diseases and creating new drugs against them (Escoubas et al., 2008). Venomic studies are highly dependent on the mass analysis that allows protein examination. However, other molecules are also found in venoms, like acylpolyamines and alkaloids with the basic highly composition of proteins and peptides. For examples snake venoms appear to be composed mostly of proteins which makes them more challenging for examining when on the other hand scorpions, cone snails, arthropods, spiders, insect’s venoms are found to be compos ed mostly of peptides. Also venoms proteins and peptides are dominated with a rich disulfide structure which is responsible for the high thermal and chemical stability and their resistance to digestive enzymes like protease. Thus low