PMID: 10881200 , Related PDB id: 1DL0

Authors:

Wang X, Connor M, Smith R, Maciejewski MW, Howden ME, Nicholson GM, Christie MJ, King GF

Title:

Discovery and characterization of a family of insecticidal neurotoxins with a rare vicinal disulfide bridge.

Journal:

Nat Struct Biol. 2000 Jun;7(6):505-13.

Abstract:

We have isolated a family of insect-selective neurotoxins from the venom of the Australian funnel-web spider that appear to be good candidates for biopesticide engineering. These peptides, which we have named the Janus-faced atracotoxins (J-ACTXs), each contain 36 or 37 residues, with four disulfide bridges, and they show no homology to any sequences in the protein/DNA databases. The three-dimensional structure of one of these toxins reveals an extremely rare vicinal disulfide bridge that we demonstrate to be critical for insecticidal activity. We propose that J-ACTX comprises an ancestral protein fold that we refer to as the disulfide-directed beta-hairpin.