V-ToCs (Venom toxin clustering): A tool for the investigation of sequence and structure similarities in snake venom toxins

Konstantinos Kalogeropoulos, Vlad Rosca, Carol O'Brien, Charlotte Risager Christensen, Rahmat Grahadi, Christoffer Vinther Sørensen, Max D. Overath, Diego Ruiz Espi, David E. Jenkins, Ulrich auf dem Keller, Andreas H. Laustsen, Thomas J. Fryer, Timothy P. Jenkins*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

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Abstract

Recently, there has been a major push toward the development of next-generation treatments against snakebite envenoming. However, unlike current antivenoms that rely on animal-derived polyclonal antibodies, most of these novel approaches are reliant on an in-depth understanding of the over 2,000 known snake venom toxins. Indeed, by identifying similarities (i.e., conserved epitopes) across these different toxins, it is possible to design cross-reactive treatments, such as broadly-neutralising antibodies, that target these similarities. Therefore, in this project, we built an automated pipeline that generates sequence and structural distance matrices and homology trees across all available snake venom toxin sequences and structures. To facilitate analysis, we also developed a user-friendly and high-throughput visualisation tool, coined “Venom TOxin CluStering” (V-ToCs). This tool allows researchers to easily investigate sequence and structure patterns in SVTs for a wide array of purposes, such as elucidating toxin evolution, and will also hopefully help guide the discovery and development of increasingly broadly-neutralising antivenoms in the near future.
Original languageEnglish
Article number108088
JournalToxicon
Volume250
Number of pages10
ISSN0041-0101
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Keywords

  • Snake toxins
  • Sequence similarity
  • Structural similarity
  • Open access tool
  • Toxinology
  • AF2

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