Brigitte Ortiz | THE RIDER
Biology Lecturer Ying Jia and two biology seniors are identifying certain proteins in a western diamondback rattlesnake venom for pharmacological purposes.
Jia and his two students recently published a report in the Journal of Venom Research website about their work on “identif[ying] 14 of the most common transcripts encoding 11 major venom toxins.”
He said he is interested in this research because snake venom contains hundreds of millions of molecules that could be very useful to develop a drug.”
“One very successful drug we call Captopril, actually from Brazilian snake venom, [is] used to treat high blood pressure,” Jia said. “Venom phospholipase A2 (PLA2) can kill some pathogenic bacteria; therefore, PLA2 could be used to develop new antibiotics.”
Ivan Lopez, a biology senior, said they helped identify certain proteins in a western diamondback rattlesnake venom through PCR (polymerase chain reaction).
“Injecting the CDNA (complementary DNA) from the snake venom itself, inject them into vectors, inject those vectors and transform them into E. coli (Escherichia coli) bacterial cells,” Lopez said, referring to the identification process. “And then, [from] those cells we obtain numerous codes for each protein, and then through that we use a process known as PCR and with that it will help identify the unique clones.”
He said the challenging part about the research is finding the unique clones.
“The proteins themselves are really heavily encoded, so what that means is that there’s some that might come out and there’s some that might not,” Lopez said.
Paulina Kowalski, a biology senior, said they hope their research will serve as a useful guide for future endeavors to unlock the full potential of the toxins.
“Specifically, snake toxins,” Kowalski said. “So, by studying the stereochemistry of these toxins, we can find what the activity and functions may be.”
