Chinese Cobra (Naja naja atra) bite is one of the leading causes of snake-bite mortality in China. The traditional anti-cobra venom serum therapy was found to be expensive and with high frequency of side effects. Therefore attempts were made to generate a high titer immunoglobulin from egg yolk (IgY) of crude cobra-venom immunized Leghorn hens, and to standardize an effective method for produci...

The cytotoxicity of the venom of 25 species of Old World elapid snake was tested and compared with the morphological and behavioural adaptations of hooding and spitting. We determined that, contrary to previous assumptions, the venoms of spitting species are not consistently more cytotoxic than those of closely related non-spitting species. While this correlation between spitting and non-spitti...

BACKGROUND Snake envenomation is a serious public health threat in the rural areas of Asian and African countries. To date, the only proven treatment for snake envenomation is antivenom therapy. Cross-neutralization of heterologous venoms by antivenom raised against venoms of closely related species has been reported. The present study examined the cross neutralizing potential of a newly develo...

Elapid snake venom is a highly valuable, but till now mainly unexplored, source of pharmacologically important peptides. We analyzed the peptide fractions with molecular masses up to 10 kDa of two elapid snake venoms-that of the African cobra, N. m. mossambica (genus Naja), and the Peninsula tiger snake, N. scutatus, from Kangaroo Island (genus Notechis). A combination of chromatographic method...

Nicotine exerts its oncogenic effects through the binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) and the activation of downstream pathways that block apoptosis and promote neo-angiogenesis. The nAChRs of the α7 subtype are present on a wide variety of cancer cells and their inhibition by cobra venom neurotoxins has been proposed in several articles and reviews as a potential innovative l...

A method for mapping all base-paired stems in both elongation and initiator tRNAs is described using double-strand-specific ribonuclease V^ from the venom of the cobra Naia naja oxiana. 32p_eneie(j RNA j s first partially digested with double-strand-specific V]_ nuclease under near physiological conditions, and the resultant fragments are then electrophoretically fractionated by size in ...