JPROT-01726; No of Pages 12 JOURNAL OF P ROTEOM IC S XX ( 2014) X XX– X XX

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect www.elsevier.com/locate/jprot

Eastern coral snake Micrurus fulvius venom toxicity in mice is mainly determined by neurotoxic phospholipases A2☆ Irene Vergara, Martha Pedraza-Escalona, Dayanira Paniagua, Rita Restano-Cassulini, Fernando Zamudio, Cesar V.F. Batista, Lourival D. Possani, Alejandro Alagón⁎ Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad # 2001, Colonia Chamilpa, Cuernavaca, Morelos 62210, México

AR TIC LE I N FO

ABS TR ACT

Keywords:

Here we show for the first time that the venom from an elapid (Micrurus fulvius) contains three

Proteome

finger toxin (3FTxs) peptides with low toxicity but high content of lethal phospholipases A2

Micrurus fulvius

(PLA2). The intravenous venom LD50 in mice was 0.3 μg/g. Fractionation on a C18 column

Coral snake

yielded 22 fractions; in terms of abundance, 58.3% of them were components of 13–14 kDa and

Neurotoxicity

24.9% were molecules of 6–7 kDa. Two fractions with PLA2 activity represented 33.4% of the

Mass spectrometry

whole venom and were the most lethal fractions. Fractions with low molecular mass (