title: Digital marine bioprospecting: mining new neurotoxin drug candidates from the transcriptomes of cold-water sea anemones.
abstract: Marine bioprospecting is the search for new marine bioactive compounds and large-scale screening in extracts represents the traditional approach. Here, we report an alternative complementary protocol, called digital marine bioprospecting, based on deep sequencing of transcriptomes. We sequenced the transcriptomes from the adult polyp stage of two cold-water sea anemones, Bolocera tuediae and Hormathia digitata. We generated approximately 1.1 million quality-filtered sequencing reads by 454 pyrosequencing, which were assembled into approximately 120,000 contigs and 220,000 single reads. Based on annotation and gene ontology analysis we profiled the expressed mRNA transcripts according to known biological processes. As a proof-of-concept we identified polypeptide toxins with a potential blocking activity on sodium and potassium voltage-gated channels from digital transcriptome libraries.
authors.affiliation: RNA and Transcriptomics Group, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.
authors.forename: Ilona
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Urbarova
authors.affiliation: RNA and Transcriptomics Group, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.
authors.forename: Bård Ove
authors.initials: BO
authors.lastname: Karlsen
authors.affiliation: RNA and Transcriptomics Group, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.
authors.forename: Siri
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Okkenhaug
authors.affiliation: Pharmacology Group, Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.
authors.forename: Ole Morten
authors.initials: OM
authors.lastname: Seternes
authors.affiliation: RNA and Transcriptomics Group, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.|Marine Genomics Group, Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, University of Nordland, N8049 Bodø, Norway.
authors.forename: Steinar D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Johansen
authors.affiliation: RNA and Transcriptomics Group, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, N9037 Tromsø, Norway.
authors.forename: Åse
authors.initials: Å
authors.lastname: Emblem
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D003080:Cold Temperature; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D055808:Drug Discovery; D017753:Ecosystem; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D057166:High-Throughput Screening Assays; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009498:Neurotoxins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D011487:Protein Conformation; D012615:Sea Anemones / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D009498:Neurotoxins