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...