PhcrTx2, a New Crab-Paralyzing Peptide Toxin from the Sea Anemone Phymanthus crucifer.

Sea anemones produce proteinaceous toxins for predation and defense, including peptide toxins that act on a large variety of ion channels of pharmacological and biomedical interest. Phymanthus crucifer is commonly found in the Caribbean Sea; however, the chemical structure and biological activity of its toxins remain unknown, with the exception of PhcrTx1, an acid-sensing ion channel (ASIC) inhibitor. Therefore, in the present work, we focused on the isolation and characterization of new P. crucifer toxins by chromatographic fractionation, followed by a toxicity screening on crabs, an evaluation of ion channels, and sequence analysis. Five groups of toxic chromatographic fractions were found, and a new paralyzing toxin was purified and named PhcrTx2. The toxin inhibited glutamate-gated currents in snail neurons (maximum inhibition of 35%, IC50 4.7 µM), and displayed little or no influence on voltage-sensitive sodium/potassium channels in snail and rat dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, nor on a variety of cloned voltage-gated ion channels. The toxin sequence was fully elucidated by Edman degradation. PhcrTx2 is a new ß-defensin-fold peptide that shares a sequence similarity to type 3 potassium channels toxins. However, its low activity on the evaluated ion channels suggests that its molecular target remains unknown. PhcrTx2 is the first known paralyzing toxin in the family Phymanthidae.

Microcystin-LR Detected in a Low Molecular Weight Fraction from a Crude Extract of Zoanthus sociatus.

Cnidarian constitutes a great source of bioactive compounds. However, research involving peptides from organisms belonging to the order Zoanthidea has received very little attention, contrasting to the numerous studies of the order Actiniaria, from which hundreds of toxic peptides and proteins have been reported. In this work, we performed a mass spectrometry analysis of a low molecular weight (LMW) fraction previously reported as lethal to mice. The low molecular weight (LMW) fraction was obtained by gel filtration of a Zoanthus sociatus (order Zoanthidea) crude extract with a Sephadex G-50, and then analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight/time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF/TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) in positive ion reflector mode from m/z 700 to m/z 4000. Afterwards, some of the most intense and representative MS ions were fragmented by MS/MS with no significant results obtained by Protein Pilot protein identification software and the Mascot algorithm search. However, microcystin masses were detected by mass-matching against libraries of non-ribosomal peptide database (NORINE). Subsequent reversed-phase C18 HPLC (in isocratic elution mode) and mass spectrometry analyses corroborated the presence of the cyanotoxin Microcystin-LR (MC-LR). To the best of our knowledge, this finding constitutes the first report of MC-LR in Z. sociatus, and one of the few evidences of such cyanotoxin in cnidarians.

A novel sea anemone peptide that inhibits acid-sensing ion channels.

Sea anemones produce ion channels peptide toxins of pharmacological and biomedical interest. However, peptides acting on ligand-gated ion channels, including acid-sensing ion channel (ASIC) toxins, remain poorly explored. PhcrTx1 is the first compound characterized from the sea anemone Phymanthus crucifer, and it constitutes a novel ASIC inhibitor. This peptide was purified by gel filtration, ion-exchange and reversed-phase chromatography followed by biological evaluation on ion channels of isolated rat dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons using patch clamp techniques. PhcrTx1 partially inhibited ASIC currents (IC50∼100 nM), and also voltage-gated K(+) currents but the effects on the peak and on the steady state currents were lower than 20% in DRG neurons, at concentrations in the micromolar range. No significant effect was observed on Na(+) voltage-gated currents in DRG neurons. The N-terminal sequencing yielded 32 amino acid residues, with a molecular mass of 3477 Da by mass spectrometry. No sequence identity to other sea anemone peptides was found. Interestingly, the bioinformatic analysis of Cys-pattern and secondary structure arrangement suggested that this peptide presents an Inhibitor Cystine Knot (ICK) scaffold, which has been found in other venomous organisms such as spider, scorpions and cone snails. Our results show that PhcrTx1 represents the first member of a new structural group of sea anemones toxins acting on ASIC and, with much lower potency, on Kv channels. Moreover, this is the first report of an ICK peptide in cnidarians, suggesting that the occurrence of this motif in venomous animals is more ancient than expected.

Peptide fingerprinting of the neurotoxic fractions isolated from the secretions of sea anemones Stichodactyla helianthus and Bunodosoma granulifera. New members of the APETx-like family identified by a 454 pyrosequencing approach.

Sea anemones are known to contain a wide diversity of biologically active peptides, mostly unexplored according to recent peptidomic and transcriptomic studies. In the present work, the neurotoxic fractions from the exudates of Stichodactyla helianthus and Bunodosoma granulifera were analyzed by reversed-phase chromatography and mass spectrometry. The first peptide fingerprints of these sea anemones were assessed, revealing the largest number of peptide components (156) so far found in sea anemone species, as well as the richer peptide diversity of B. granulifera in relation to S. helianthus. The transcriptomic analysis of B. granulifera, performed by massive cDNA sequencing with 454 pyrosequencing approach allowed the discovery of five new APETx-like peptides (U-AITX-Bg1a-e - including the full sequences of their precursors for four of them), which together with type 1 sea anemone sodium channel toxins constitute a very distinguishable feature of studied sea anemone species belonging to genus Bunodosoma. The molecular modeling of these new APETx-like peptides showed a distribution of positively charged and aromatic residues in putative contact surfaces as observed in other animal toxins. On the other hand, they also showed variable electrostatic potentials, thus suggesting a docking onto their targeted channels in different spatial orientations. Moreover several crab paralyzing toxins (other than U-AITX-Bg1a-e), which induce a variety of symptoms in crabs, were isolated. Some of them presumably belong to new classes of crab-paralyzing peptide toxins, especially those with molecular masses below 2kDa, which represent the smallest peptide toxins found in sea anemones.