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 ...
You go first..............
its never old if you havent heard it before..........................
A: I don't know but if it bites you, you can ride it to the hospital.
Love it when they scare the crap out of the Liberal relatives visiting imposing on us. Usually gets rid of them quickly, but limited to July, and August when the Tarantulas are out, and about.
Interesting stuff. There have been recent developments using the venom of a nasty little bugger called the cone snail for painkillers as well.
To paraphrase Commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott: “Does it go well with scotch?”
CC
Wanna see a grown man scream like a school girl ? Pot one near me.
But I will be screaming like a very MANLY school girl mind you...
Try it on Obama first.
Hi Norm.
:)
What is botox, but poison. I could see these things being used for good.
Away from me evil woman! ;)
*sob!*
/slithers away
As lone as you don’t crawl way on 8 legs, slithering is just fine ;)
I'm thinking that if you put one near Obama you would NOT get a manly scream...
Especially since his efforts at throwing a baseball embarrass girl pitchers everywhere... ;-)
Nope gotta be a real one.
And you know something else? It freaking SUCKS living in AZ with the tarantulas, the camel spiders, the wolf spiders, the damn scorpions...
Why am I here again? ;)
We used to spot tarantulas outside, around our grandparents house. Where we live now, we just have black widows.
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