Integrating venom peptide libraries into a phylogenetic and broader biological framework

The venomous marine snails are conventionally divided into three groups,
the cone snails (family Conidae), the auger snails (family Terebridae) and
the turrids (formerly all assigned to a single family, Turridae). In this
study, a library of venom peptides from species conventionally assigned to
the genus Turris was correlated to a phylogenetic analysis. Nucleotide
sequences of multiple genes from transcriptomes were used to assess the
phylogenic relationships across a diverse set of species. The resulting
tree shows that as conventionally defined, the Conoidean genus Turris, is
polyphyletic. We describe a new genus, Purpuraturris gen. nov., that
comprises the outlier species. In addition to morphological distinctions,
molecular data reveal that this group are more closely related to
Unedogemmula and Turridrupa than to Turris sensu stricto. The correlation
between phylogenetic information and multiple peptide sequences from the
library of venom peptides was used to highlight those peptides mostly
likely to be unique and intimately associated with biological diversity.
The plethora of peptide sequences available requires two prioritization
decisions: which subset of peptides to initially characterize, and after
these are characterized, which to comprehensively investigate for
potential biomedical applications such as drug developments.

有毒海洋蜗牛传统上分为三类：芋螺（科：Conidae）、笋螺（科：Terebridae）和塔螺（原均归属于单一科——塔螺科，Turridae）。本研究中，将传统归属于塔螺属（Turris）物种的毒液肽（peptides）库与系统发育分析（phylogenetic analysis）进行关联。利用转录组（transcriptomes）中多个基因的核苷酸序列，评估了不同物种间的系统发育关系（phylogenic relationships）。结果树显示，传统定义的芋螺总科（Conoidean）塔螺属（Turris）为多系群（polyphyletic）。我们描述了一个新属——紫塔螺属（Purpuraturris gen. nov.），其包含这些边缘物种。除形态学差异外，分子数据表明该类群与Unedogemmula属和Turridrupa属的亲缘关系比与狭义塔螺属（Turris sensu stricto）更近。通过关联系统发育信息与毒液肽库中的多条肽序列（peptide sequences），筛选出最可能具有独特性且与生物多样性密切相关的肽段。现有大量肽序列需进行两项优先级决策：首先应表征哪些肽子集，以及在表征后，哪些肽段需针对潜在生物医药应用（biomedical applications）（如药物开发）进行全面研究。