Conus

Cone snails (Conus species) are phylogenetically and ecologically highly diverse prosobranch predatory marine gastropods distributed throughout the world's tropical oceans in the regions of Indo-Pacific, Eastern Pacific and Atlantic. Many specialized envenomation strategies are widely evolved across worm, mollusk and fish-hunting cone snails for predation, defense and competition. Each Conus species contains 100-200 small, biologically active venome peptides known as conotoxins or conopeptides. There are different types of conotoxins called the alpha, delta, kappa, mu, and omega according to the differences in the number and pattern of disulfide bonds. In this study, we have compared 30 Conus species by analyzing the nucleotide and amino acid sequences, conserved regions, phosphorylation and glycosylation profiles of-conotoxins that inhibit nicotinic acetylcholine receptors at nerves and muscles. The results of our bioinformatic studies had shown close relationship between toxin modifications (glycosylation and phosphorylation) and snail diets. Our comparative analysis provides new insights into the complexity of the processes that drive the evolution and diversification of Conus species, conotoxins, and their diets.

This paper describes and provides information on the species of the genus Conus (Neogastropoda:Conidae) preserved in the Laboratorio de Biología y Sistemática de Invertebrados Marinos de la Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas (LaBSIM) y el Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional de San Marcos (MUSM). The material was collected at the Department of Tumbes (9 locations) and Piura (16 locations). Intesive collect was realized in April 2007 and occasional in posterior years. Of the 16 reported species it is counted with material corresponding to 11 of them: Conus (Conus) gladiator Broderip, 1833; Conus (Asprella) arcuatus Broderip & Sowerby, 1829; Conus (Cylinder) lucidus Wood, 1828; Conus (Leptoconus) poormani Berry, 1968; Conus (L.) recurvus Broderip, 1833; Conus (Pyruconus) fergusoni ;Sowerby, 1873; Conus (P.) patricius Hinds, 1843; Conus (Ximeniconus) mahogani Reeve,1843; Conus (X.) perplexus Sowerby, 1857; Conus (X.) tornatus Sowerby, 1833 and Conus (X.) ximenes Gray, 1839...

Cone snails (Conus species) are phylogenetically and ecologically highly diverse prosobranch predatory marine gastropods distributed throughout the world's tropical oceans in the regions of Indo-Pacific, Eastern Pacific, and Atlantic. Many specialized envenomation types are widely evolved across the worm, mollusk and fish-hunting cone snails for predation, defense, and competition. Each Conus species contains small, biologically active venom peptides known as conotoxins or conopeptides. Posttranslational modifications such as glycosylation and phosphorylation may play an important role in the molecular evolution of conotoxins. The aim of this study is to find out the hypothetical relationships between toxin posttranslational modifications and their effects on feeding types of snails. In this study, using bioinformatic tools, we analyzed nucleotide and amino acid sequences of 30 Conus species alpha conotoxins and then detected their glycosylation and phosphorylation profiles to test this hypothesis. The main reason to select alpha-conotoxin sequences comes from their abundance in NCBI database according to other conotoxin types. We have constructed a phylogenetic tree of conotoxins to compare and interpret the obtained results. We have found strong relationships between conotoxin modifications and feeding types of snails. Moreover, we detected evolutionary conserved probable (possible) glycosylation and phosphorylation positions in conotoxin structure specific to snail lineages. Our analysis might bring new perspectives into the scientific literature to understand the co-evolutionary mechanisms and relationships between Conus species feeding types and their conotoxin diversity.