Citation

Liang SP, Zhang DY, Pan X, Chen Q, Zhou PA. Toxicon 1993; 31(8): 969-978.

Affiliation

Department of Biology, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, P.R. China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8212049

Abstract

By means of reverse phase and ion-exchange high performance liquid chromatography, a neurotoxic peptide named huwentoxin-I was purified from the venom of the Chinese bird spider Selenocosmia huwena. The intraperitoneal and intracisternal LD50 in mice of the toxin were 0.70 mg/kg and 9.40 micrograms/kg, respectively. This toxin at the concentration of 1 x 10(-5) g/ml can irreversibly block the neuromuscular transmission of the isolated mouse phrenic nerve-diaphragm preparation in 13.4 +/- 1.3 min (mean +/- S.D., n = 5). The isoelectric point is 8.95 determined by isoelectric focusing electrophoresis. It consists of 33 amino acids including 6 Cys and 6 Lys determined by amino acid analysis. The complete amino sequence of huwentoxin-I was determined. The N-terminal and C-terminal residues were Ala and Leu, respectively. The primary structure showed partial homology with that of mu-agatoxins from the funnel-web spider Agelenopsis aperta.

Language: en