Snake Venom Genomics and Evolution

物种是根据它们共同的进化历史来划分的，但是每当它们被详细研究时，它们就会在它们的分布范围内表现出变化。如果这种变化代表了对当地条件的细微适应，那么整个物种水平的适应可能会受到阻碍。该项目需要通过描述不同物种之间和物种内部蛇毒的进化模式来研究这个问题。蛇毒是研究适应性的理想材料，因为它们在摄食和防御中具有重要的进化作用，并且具有专化当地猎物物种的潜力。美国本土10种蛇的毒液将完全由尖端分子技术表征，用于研究物种水平的适应性进化，其中三个物种的毒液变异将被量化，用于研究细-这项研究将提供一个前所未有的表征蛇毒及其地理变异的一些最具医学意义的物种原产于美国，有助于我们理解适应性进化。据估计，蛇咬伤每年在全世界造成125，000人死亡，开发和改进治疗方法将受益于毒液成分的详细分子表征。由于蛇毒毒素的靶标及其与参与基本生物过程和人类疾病的蛋白质的共同祖先，该项目的结果可能会强烈影响药物设计和治疗疼痛，炎症，关节炎，癌症，心脏病发作和中风。

Species are delineated on the basis of their shared evolutionary histories, but whenever they have been examined in detail, they show variation across their ranges. If this variation represents fine-scale adaptation to local conditions, adaptation at the overall species level may be hindered. The project entails examining this issue by characterizing the evolutionary patterns in snake venoms across and within species. Snake venoms are ideal for studying adaptation because of their evolutionarily significant roles in feeding and defense and their potential for specialization for local prey species. The venoms of 10 species of snake native to the United States will be completely characterized by cutting-edge molecular techniques for study of species-level adaptive evolution, and venom variation within three of these species will be quantified for study of fine-scale adaptation.This research will provide an unprecedented characterization of snake venoms and their geographic variation for some of the most medically significant species native to the United States, contributing to our understanding of adaptive evolution. Snakebites cause an estimated 125,000 deaths per year worldwide, and the development and improvement of treatments for them will benefit from this detailed molecular characterization of venom composition. Because of the targets of snake-venom toxins and their shared ancestry with proteins involved in basic biological processes and human disease, the results of the project could strongly influence drug design and treatment for pain, inflammation, arthritis, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.