Snake or honeybee envenomation can cause substantial morbidity and mortality, and it has been proposed that the activation of mast cells by snake or insect venoms can contribute to these effects. We show, in contrast, that mast cells can significantly reduce snake-venom-induced pathology in mice, at least in part by releasing carboxypeptidase A and possibly other proteases, which can degrade ve...

BACKGROUND Serine proteases are major components of viper venom and target various stages of the blood coagulation system in victims and prey. A better understanding of the diversity of serine proteases and other enzymes present in snake venom will help to understand how the complexity of snake venom has evolved and will aid the development of novel therapeutics for treating snake bites. METH...

The review is mainly devoted to snake venom a-neurotoxins which target different muscle-type and neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. The primary and spatial structures of other snake venom proteins as well as mammalian proteins of the Ly-6 family, which structurally resemble the `three-finger' snake proteins, are also briefly discussed. The main emphasis is placed on recent data charact...

Among snake venom procoagulant proteins, group II prothrombin activators are functionally similar to blood coagulation factor Xa. We have purified and partially characterized the enzymatic properties of trocarin, the group II prothrombin activator from the venom of the Australian elapid, Tropidechis carinatus (rough-scaled snake). Prothrombin activation by trocarin is enhanced by Ca2+, phosphol...

Variation in venom composition is a ubiquitous phenomenon in snakes and occurs both interspecifically and intraspecifically. Venom variation can have severe outcomes for snakebite victims by rendering the specific antibodies found in antivenoms ineffective against heterologous toxins found in different venoms. The rapid evolutionary expansion of different toxin-encoding gene families in differe...

objective: envenomation by heamotoxic snakes constituted a critical health occurrence in the world. bleeding is the most sever consequence following snake bite with viperid and crothalid snakes. it is believed that the degradation of vascular membrane caused hemorrhage; in contrast, some suggested that direct cytotoxicity has role in endothelial cell disturbances. this study was to evaluate the...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the doses of antivenom administered to adult patients with severe brown snake envenoming. DESIGN AND SETTING Review of charts from Western Australian adult teaching hospitals, December 1991 to December 2001. PATIENTS 35 patients with severe brown snake envenoming, defined prospectively as afibrinogenaemia (< 0.3 g/L) after a bite by a brown snake (genus Pseudonaja)....

A new procedure for determining the amount of venom ejected by a bite of a poisonous snake was established. The procedure consists of exposing a fresh piece of rabbit muscle to an attack by a poisonous nake, extracting the injected venom from the piece, determining the toxic activity of the extract and calculating the amount of venom ejected. We confirmed that about 90 % of the injected venom w...

Among snake venom procoagulant proteins, group II prothrombin activators are functionally similar to blood coagulation factor Xa. We have purified and partially characterized the enzymatic properties of trocarin, the group II prothrombin activator from the venom of the Australian elapid, Tropidechis carinatus (rough-scaled snake). Prothrombin activation by trocarin is enhanced by Ca21, phosphol...

We analyzed the origin and evolution of snake venom toxin families represented in both viperid and elapid snakes by means of phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid sequences of the toxins and related nonvenom proteins. Out of eight toxin families analyzed, five provided clear evidence of recruitment into the snake venom proteome before the diversification of the advanced snakes (Kunitz-type pr...