Citation

Peng X, Zhang Y, Liu J, Yu H, Chen J, Lei Q, Wang X, Liang S. J. Biochem. Mol. Toxicol. 2014; 28(5): 198-205.

Affiliation

Key Laboratory of Protein Chemistry and Developmental Biology of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan 410081, People's Republic of China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/jbt.21553

PMID

24616210

Abstract

The early research found that the spiderlings of black widow spider (Latrodectus tredecimguttatus) exhibited obvious toxicity to animals. The present work performed a systematical analysis of the aqueous extract of newborn black widow spiderlings. The extract was shown to contain 69.42% of proteins varying in molecular weights and isoelectric points. Abdominal injection of the extract into mice and cockroaches caused obvious poisoning symptoms as well as death, with LD50 being 5.30 mg/kg in mice and 16.74 µg/g in Periplaneta americana. Electrophysiological experiments indicated that the extract at a concentration of 10 µg/mL could completely block the neuromuscular transmission in isolated mouse nerve-hemidiaphragm preparations within 21 ± 1.5 min, and 100 µg/mL extract could inhibit a certain percentage of voltage-activated Na(+) , K(+) , and Ca(2+) channel currents in rat dorsal root ganglion neurons. These results demonstrate that the spiderlings are rich in neurotoxic components, which play important roles in the spiderling toxicity.

Language: en