Tarantula. Image credit: Michael Gäbler / CC BY 3.0.
Posted on 04/27/2014 8:10:28 PM PDT by neverdem
Using an innovative screening method, a team of scientists from Australia and the United States has discovered a peptide in the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula (Thrixopelma pruriens) that blunts activity in pain-transmitting neurons.
Tarantula. Image credit: Michael Gäbler / CC BY 3.0.
The novel method, named toxineering, has the potential to search millions of different spider toxins for safe pain-killing drugs and therapies.
Dr Michael Nitabach from Yale School of Medicine and his colleagues screened toxins from a variety of tarantula species to find one that blocked TRPA1, an ion channel on the surface of pain-sensing neurons that is implicated in inflammation and neuropathic pain.
By generating a small library of mutated versions of the tarantula toxin, they identified Protoxin-I – a 35-residue peptide from the venom of the Peruvian green-velvet tarantula – that blocks TRPA1 but has no effect on activity of other channels on the surface of neurons.
“The beauty of the system is we can also screen engineered toxins not found in nature, and identify higher-potency and more specific molecular variants that lack deleterious effects on essential nerve functions,” said Dr Nitabach, who is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Current Biology...
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
It takes practice to scream girlishly like a REAL man. And he’s too busy with golf to bother. I on the other hand scream manly, forcefully and often during the tarantula migrations.
VERY manly. Like a Greek God manly!
Sort of...
Because of the Sonoran and Rosy Boas?
Viva Larriva!
[I went off and got lost in the other T&T videos] :D
:)
Because of things the size of softballs that walk on ceilings and fall on you at 3 AM and you wake up with it on your chest ;)
The strange tension between theology and science
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FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
But it’s FURRY. Pet it!
Oh I do! One swift/hard pet to the side. then spend the next half hour finding the damn thing and killing it. Out of feelings of love. An act of love really. I love my house tarantula free!
Then being up the rest of the night looking for how it got in and any of his friends.
They mean no harm.
...unlike me.
;D
They’re my favorites!
[mostly because we have no Black Widows here]
Niiiiiiiice tarantula.
I can kill a tarantula without remorse. You? well I’ll think about it if you drop one on me...And then send liberals to your house with the keys to your trike!!!
Am I evil? Yes...yes I am...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u-HCHCuHMg
DEAAAADDDD tarantula.....
It catches mice. That’s as good as a cat!
It aint fuzzy. No problem ‘)
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