title: Snake venom cardiotoxins-structure, dynamics, function and folding.
abstract: Snake cardiotoxins are highly basic (pI > 10) small molecular weight (approximately 6.5 kDa), all beta-sheet proteins. They exhibit a broad spectrum of interesting biological activities. The secondary structural elements in these toxins include antiparallel double and triple stranded beta-sheets. The three dimensional structures of these toxins reveal an unique asymmetric distribution of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids. The 3D structures of closely related snake venom toxins such as neurotoxins and cardiotoxin-like basic proteins (CLBP) fail to show similar pattern(s) in the distribution of polar and nonpolar residues. Recently, many novel biological activities have been reported for cardiotoxins. However, to-date, there is no clear structure-function correlation(s) available for snake venom cardiotoxins. The aim of this comprehensive review is to summarize and critically evaluate the progress in research on the structure, dynamics, function and folding aspects of snake venom cardiotoxins.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: T K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Jayaraman
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: A I
authors.initials: AI
authors.lastname: Arunkumar
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sivaraman
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Samuel
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D004179:Cobra Cardiotoxin Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000633:toxicity; D005544:Forecasting; D006461:Hemolysis; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009498:Neurotoxins / Q000737:chemistry; D010640:Phenothiazines / Q000737:chemistry; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017510:Protein Folding
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004179:Cobra Cardiotoxin Proteins; D009498:Neurotoxins; D010640:Phenothiazines; C009469:thionine