It is time for top-down venomics

• Autor(a) principal: Melani,Rafael D.
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Nogueira,Fabio C. S., Domont,Gilberto B.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: The Journal of venomous animals and toxins including tropical diseases (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1678-91992017000100209
• topic: Venomics; Toxiforms; Top-down proteomics; Denaturing top-down proteomics; Native top-down proteomics

Abstract The protein composition of animal venoms is usually determined by peptide-centric proteomics approaches (bottom-up proteomics). However, this technique cannot, in most cases, distinguish among toxin proteoforms, herein called toxiforms, because of the protein inference problem. Top-down proteomics (TDP) analyzes intact proteins without digestion and provides high quality data to identify and characterize toxiforms. Denaturing top-down proteomics is the most disseminated subarea of TDP, which performs qualitative and quantitative analyzes of proteoforms up to ~30 kDa in high-throughput and automated fashion. On the other hand, native top-down proteomics provides access to information on large proteins (> 50 kDA) and protein interactions preserving non-covalent bonds and physiological complex stoichiometry. The use of native and denaturing top-down venomics introduced novel and useful techniques to toxinology, allowing an unprecedented characterization of venom proteins and protein complexes at the toxiform level. The collected data contribute to a deep understanding of venom natural history, open new possibilities to study the toxin evolution, and help in the development of better biotherapeutics.