New Approaches in Monitoring Venom of Genus Dendroaspis

Abstract

A novel approach to the study of venoms characterizes and compares the venom structure of genus Dendroaspis presented in this work. The complex molecular structure of individual venoms of genus Dendroaspis was defined graphically as a record of synchronous fluorescence fingerprint and atomic force microscopy. Simple comparison of these methods mentioned above of individual analyzed venom samples will immediately reveal changes in each venom composition. Application of these methods with electrophoresis and total protein concentration are new alternatives that were used for monitoring venom composition in selected snakes. Electrophoretogram of black mamba with very low content of total proteins contained the largest number of separated fractions, whereas synchronous fluorescence analysis showed that the highest endogenous fluorescence was found in the venom of black mamba compared with the venom of green mambas, respectively. Our results confirmed different molecular structure in the venom of the genus Dendroaspis. The practical advantages of the selected techniques are high sensitivity and minimal quantity of venom required for the assay. These novel methods show that the least toxic Dendroaspis intermedius contained the greatest amount of proteins contrary to Dendroaspis polylepis with a considerably lower content of proteins but the highest toxic bioactivity.

Keywords:

• atomic force microscopy
• autofluorescence
• electrophoresis
• mambas
• proteins
• venom

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Viperafarm Biely Kostol from Slovakia team and the team Tropical world Trakovice from Slovakia for professional help during collecting the venom from snakes and also for taking photos. The authors would also like to thank RNDr. Lenka Varinská, Ph.D. and Prof. MVDr. Ján Mojžiš, DrSc (Department of Pharmacology, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Faculty of Medicine, and Slovakia) for allowing us to study the antiproliferative properties of mamba venom with rat glioblastoma C6 cells. Finally, we extend our appreciation to professional herpetologist Thea Litschka Koen from Swaziland (Africa) in providing us with antivenom. Our thanks belong to Mária Kozáčková from the Department of Physiology, University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Košice, for technical support in electrophoretic analysis.

Notes

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/lstl.