title: Diversity and evolution of conotoxins based on gene expression profiling of Conus litteratus.
abstract: Cone snails are attracting increasing scientific attention due to their unprecedented diversity of invaluable channel-targeted peptides. As arguably the largest and most successful evolutionary genus of invertebrates, Conus also may become the model system to study the evolution of multigene families and biodiversity. Here, a set of 897 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) derived from a Conus litteratus venom duct was analyzed to illuminate the diversity and evolution mechanism of conotoxins. Nearly half of these ESTs represent the coding sequences of conotoxins, which were grouped into 42 novel conotoxin cDNA sequences (seven superfamilies), with T-superfamily conotoxins being the dominant component. The gene expression profile of conotoxin revealed that transcripts are expressed with order-of-magnitude differences, sequence divergence within a superfamily increases from the N to the C terminus of the open reading frame, and even multiple scaffold-different mature peptides exist in a conotoxin gene superfamily. Most excitingly, we identified a novel conotoxin superfamily and three novel cysteine scaffolds. These results give an initial insight into the C. litteratus transcriptome that will contribute to a better understanding of conotoxin evolution and the study of the cone snail genome in the near future.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Canhui
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pi
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Junliang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiuhua
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shaojun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Meiling
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shangwu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Therapeutic Functional Genes, The Open Laboratory for Marine Functional Genomics of the State High-Tech Development Program, Department of Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: lssxal@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Anlong
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D020916:Conotoxins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D052078:Conus Snail / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005091:Exons; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015723:Gene Library; D014644:Genetic Variation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009498:Neurotoxins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D020916:Conotoxins; D009498:Neurotoxins; D011506:Proteins