Urbarova I, Karlsen BO, Okkenhaug S, Seternes OM, Johansen SD, Emblem Å. Digital marine bioprospecting: mining new neurotoxin drug candidates from the transcriptomes of cold-water sea anemones.
Mar Drugs 2012;
10:2265-2279. [PMID:
23170083 PMCID:
PMC3497022 DOI:
10.3390/md10102265]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2012] [Revised: 10/08/2012] [Accepted: 10/10/2012] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Marine bioprospecting is the search for new marine bioactive compounds and large-scale screening in extracts represents the traditional approach. Here, we report an alternative complementary protocol, called digital marine bioprospecting, based on deep sequencing of transcriptomes. We sequenced the transcriptomes from the adult polyp stage of two cold-water sea anemones, Bolocera tuediae and Hormathia digitata. We generated approximately 1.1 million quality-filtered sequencing reads by 454 pyrosequencing, which were assembled into approximately 120,000 contigs and 220,000 single reads. Based on annotation and gene ontology analysis we profiled the expressed mRNA transcripts according to known biological processes. As a proof-of-concept we identified polypeptide toxins with a potential blocking activity on sodium and potassium voltage-gated channels from digital transcriptome libraries.
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