Williams, Orette St. Aubyn

Cone snails (genus conus) are marine gastropods of tropical waters. They capture their prey by envenomation and for this; they have evolved a highly efficient and diverse venom cocktail of proteins and peptides. This has elicited extreme interest in venom composition and their molecular targets. In this study, the venom of Conus jaspedius, a small Atlantic cone snail was extracted, venom components isolated and analyzed, by a combination of Size exclusion and High performance liquid chromatography, NMR, Mass spectrometry and Edman sequencing. Here, four novel conopeptide sequences are reported, namely; an alpha conotoxin, a member of the A and O superfamilies and a new family.