title: Structural studies of conotoxins.
abstract: Conotoxins are small disulfide-rich peptides from the venoms of marine cone snails. They target a variety of ion channels, transporters, and receptors besides the interest in their natural functions in venoms and they are of much interest as drug leads. This short article gives an overview of the structural diversity of conotoxins, and illustrates this diversity with recent selected examples of conotoxin structures.
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Institute for Molecular Bioscience and Australian Research Council Special Research Centre for Functional and Applied Genomics, Brisbane, QLD, Australia. n.daly@imb.uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Norelle L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Daly
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Craik
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D020916:Conotoxins / Q000737:chemistry*; D052078:Conus Snail / Q000737:chemistry*; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D004220:Disulfides / Q000737:chemistry; D004355:Drug Stability; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000302:isolation & purification; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017510:Protein Folding; D012995:Solubility
chemical_list: D020916:Conotoxins; D004220:Disulfides; D010455:Peptides