Harnessing snake venom cardiotoxins for antimicrobial peptide discovery

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  Harnessing snake venom cardiotoxins for antimicrobial peptide discovery Abstract Snake venoms are a rich source of bioactive molecules with considerable potential for drug discovery. Cardiotoxins (CTXs) from cobras ( Naja spp.) are membrane-active venom proteins and promising templates for antimicrobial peptide development. Here, we combined two computational toxin-mining strategies to identify antimicrobial peptide candidates from CTXs. First, AMPA-guided sequence mining was used to detect encrypted antimicrobial regions within CTX sequences. Second, sequence alignment and consensus-sequence analysis were employed to generate peptides from a conserved CTX scaffold. Candidate peptides were prioritised using multiple machine learning- and deep learning-based antimicrobial peptide prediction tools, resulting in fourteen CTX-inspired peptides, including two modified derivatives of CTX-p5. Antimicrobial screening showed limited activity across the peptide panel, with CTX-p5 exhibiti...

On the Mexican trapdoor spiders: description of a new species of the spider genus Eucteniza Ausserer (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Euctenizidae) from the western coast of Mexico

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On the Mexican trapdoor spiders: description of a new species of the spider genus Eucteniza Ausserer (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Euctenizidae) from the western coast of Mexico

Abstract

The trapdoor spider genus Eucteniza Ausserer, 1875 is distributed in North America, with most diversity in Mexico. In this work, a new species is described from the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, Jalisco, Mexico: Eucteniza cuixmala sp. nov., was collected from a dry tropical deciduous forest in the western coast of Mexico. The species is described only from the male holotype. Of the 14 species of Eucteniza described so far, eight have been described based only on the male holotype. The description of this new species increases the diversity of the genus to 15 known species, 14 of which are found in Mexico, two in the USA, and one in both countries: E. relata (O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1895). In addition, we provide an amended taxonomic identification key for males of the genus.

Valdez-Mondragón, A. & Jiménez, M. L. (2024). On the Mexican trapdoor spiders: description of a new species of the spider genus Eucteniza Ausserer (Araneae, Mygalomorphae, Euctenizidae) from the western coast of Mexico. Zootaxa 5453(4): 538-548. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.5453.4.4