title: Transcriptome analysis of venom glands from a single fishing spider Dolomedes mizhoanus.
abstract: The spider venom is a large pharmacological repertoire composed of different types of bioactive peptide toxins. Despite the importance of spider toxins in capturing terrestrial prey and defending themselves against predators, we know little about the venom components from the spider acting on the fish. Here we constructed a cDNA library of a pair of venomous glands from a single fish-hunting spider Dolomedes mizhoanus. A total of 356 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were obtained from the venom gland cDNA library and analyzed. These transcripts were further classified into 45 clusters (19 contigs and 26 singletons), most of which encoded cystine knot toxins (CKTs) and non-CKTs. The ESTs coding for 53 novel CKT precursors were abundant transcripts in the venom glands of the spider D. mizhoanus, accounting for 76% of the total ESTs, the precursors of which were grouped into six families based on the sequence identity and the phylogenetic analysis. In addition, the non-CKTs deduced from 21% of the total ESTs were annotated by Gene Ontology terms and eukaryotic orthologous groups. Fifty-five CKT precursors deduced from 273 ESTs are the largest dataset for a single spider specimen to date. The results may contribute to discovering novel potential drug leads from spider venoms and a better understanding of the evolutionary relationship of the spider toxin.
authors.affiliation: Department of Parasitology, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410013, PR China.
authors.forename: Liping
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Changjun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Zhigui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Meichun
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Xing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Songping
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology; D047168:Cystine Knot Motifs / Q000235:genetics; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods; D015723:Gene Library; D063990:Gene Ontology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013111:Spider Venoms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D013112:Spiders / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D013111:Spider Venoms
keywords: Dolomedes mizhoanus; Evolution; Expressed sequence tag; Spider toxin; Transcriptome; cDNA library