Date:
Location:
Mandë Holford
Associate Professor in Chemistry
Hunter College and CUNY-Graduate Center
Exploring venom glands, diversity and function of carnivorous marine snails
Abstract: Venom peptides, and the genes from which they are derived, are a resource for investigating biological processes pertaining to organismal evolution (adaptive radiation, diversification), gene development (duplication, neofunctionalization), and cellular physiology involving ion channels (activating/inhibitory ligands). This talk will demonstrate the scientific path from mollusks to medicine examining how venom evolved over time in the terebrid snails (Terebridae), and how we can use this evolutionary knowledge as a roadmap for discovering and characterizing new compounds with therapeutic potential for treating pain and cancer. A venomics strategy, combining genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, has been applied to the discovery, characterization and optimization of terebrid venom peptides (teretoxins). However, identifying bioactive venom peptides remains a significant challenge. The Holford lab uses inventive tools from chemistry and biology to: (1) investigate the evolution of venom in the 600 known species of predatory marine snails, (2) discover disulfide-rich peptides from a venom source, (3) develop high-throughput methods for characterizing structure-function peptide interactions, and (4) deliver novel peptides to their site of action for therapeutic application.
Host: Hanken Lab
