title: Transcriptome Analysis to Understand the Toxicity of Latrodectus tredecimguttatus Eggs.
abstract: Latrodectus tredecimguttatusis a kind of highly venomous black widow spider, with toxicity coming from not only venomous glands but also other parts of its body as well as newborn spiderlings and eggs. Up to date, althoughL. tredecimguttatuseggs have been demonstrated to be rich in proteinaceous toxins, there is no systematic investigation on such active components at transcriptome level. In this study, we performed a high-throughput transcriptome sequencing ofL. tredecimguttatuseggs with Illumina sequencing technology. As a result, 53,284 protein-coding unigenes were identified, of which 14,185 unigenes produced significant hits in the available databases, including 280 unigenes encoding proteins or peptides homologous to known proteinaceous toxins. GO term and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses of the 280 unigenes showed that 375 GO terms and 18 KEGG pathways were significantly enriched. Functional analysis indicated that these unigene-coded toxins have the bioactivities to degrade tissue proteins, inhibit ion channels, block neuromuscular transmission, provoke anaphylaxis, induce apoptosis and hyperalgesia, etc. No known typical proteinaceous toxins inL. tredecimguttatusvenomous glands, such as latrotoxins, were identified, suggesting that the eggs have a different toxicity mechanism from that of the venom. Our present transcriptome analysis not only helps to reveal the gene expression profile and toxicity mechanism of theL. tredecimguttatuseggs, but also provides references for the further related researches.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Protein Chemistry and Developmental Biology of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China. xudehong163@126.com.|Laboratory of Biological Engineering, College of Pharmacy, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha 410208, China. xudehong163@126.com.
authors.forename: Dehong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Protein Chemistry and Developmental Biology of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China. wang_xianchun@263.net.
authors.forename: Xianchun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D060829:Arthropod Proteins / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics; D001740:Black Widow Spider; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000235:genetics; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D063990:Gene Ontology; D010063:Ovum / Q000737:chemistry*; D014118:Toxins, Biological / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D060829:Arthropod Proteins; D018076:DNA, Complementary; D014118:Toxins, Biological
keywords: Illumina sequencing; Latrodectus tredecimguttatus; eggs; proteinaceous toxin; transcriptome