American Chemical Society, Journal of Proteome Research, 10(14), p. 4372-4381, 2015
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.5b00630
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Venomous marine cone snails produce a unique and remarkably diverse range of venom peptides (conotoxins and conopeptides) that have proven invaluable as pharmacological probes and leads to new therapies. Conus catus is 'hook-and-line' fish hunter from clade I, with ~20 conotoxins identified, including the analgesic ω-conotoxin CVID (AM336). The current study unravels the venom composition of C. catus with tandem mass spectrometry and 454 sequencing data. From the venom gland transcriptome, 104 precursors were recovered from 11 superfamilies, with superfamily A (especially κA-) conotoxins dominating (77%) their venom. Proteomic analysis confirmed the κA-conotoxins dominated the predation-evoked milked venom of each of six C. catus analysed and revealed remarkable intraspecific variation in both the intensity and type of conotoxins. High-throughput FLIPR assays revealed that the predation-evoked venom contained a range of conotoxins targeting the nAChR, Cav and Nav ion channels, consistent with α- and ω-conotoxins being used for predation by C. catus. However, the κA-conotoxins did not act at these targets but induced potent and rapid immobilisation followed by bursts of activity and finally paralysis when injected intramuscularly in zebrafish. Our venomics approach revealed the complexity of the envenomation strategy used by C. catus, which contains a mix of both excitatory and inhibitory venom peptides.