Chemically-assisted fragmentation as a tool for identifying Bothrops alternatus venom components

ÁVILA LUCÍA; FINGERMAN MATÍAS; DE MARCO MARÍA BELÉN; CASCONE OSVALDO; BISCOGLIO DE JIMÉNEZ BONINO MIRTHA JOSEFA; DOKMETJIAN CRISTIAN; PAVÁN CARLOS HUMBERTO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigaciones en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2014

Sociedad Argentina de Investigaciones en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Characterization of the peptide/protein content of snake venoms has a number of benefits for basic research, clinical diagnosis, development of new research tools and drugs of potential clinical use, and for antivenom production strategies. Within ? and between ? species heterogeneity of venoms may also account for differences in the clinical symptoms observed in accidental envenomation. Transcriptomic analyses were carried out in order to explore putative venom components. In this work a proteomic study was made to identify Bothrops alternatus venom components by using SDS-PAGE and chemically-assisted fragmentation (CAF) with 4-sulfophenyl isothiocyanate before MALDI TOF/TOF mass spectrometry and de novo sequencing, combined with database searching. CAF improves fragmentation efficiency and simplifies the interpretation of acquired spectra. Bothrops is a genus of venomous vipers widely distributed in our country and venoms of snakes from different regions were compared. Several proteins already described in venoms from other species of this genus were identified. Moreover, we were able to find individual differences between venoms from different members of the B. alternatus species. Particularly, a 32 kDa protein that was identified as a glycoprotein Ib-binding in some individual venoms is completely absent in others.