Tarantula. Image credit: Michael Gäbler / CC BY 3.0.
Posted on 04/27/2014 8:10:28 PM PDT by neverdem
Using an innovative screening method, a team of scientists from Australia and the United States has discovered a peptide in the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula (Thrixopelma pruriens) that blunts activity in pain-transmitting neurons.
Tarantula. Image credit: Michael Gäbler / CC BY 3.0.
The novel method, named toxineering, has the potential to search millions of different spider toxins for safe pain-killing drugs and therapies.
Dr Michael Nitabach from Yale School of Medicine and his colleagues screened toxins from a variety of tarantula species to find one that blocked TRPA1, an ion channel on the surface of pain-sensing neurons that is implicated in inflammation and neuropathic pain.
By generating a small library of mutated versions of the tarantula toxin, they identified Protoxin-I – a 35-residue peptide from the venom of the Peruvian green-velvet tarantula – that blocks TRPA1 but has no effect on activity of other channels on the surface of neurons.
“The beauty of the system is we can also screen engineered toxins not found in nature, and identify higher-potency and more specific molecular variants that lack deleterious effects on essential nerve functions,” said Dr Nitabach, who is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Current Biology...
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
Most of them have enough sense not to bite something too big to digest.
So do Basset hounds. The ultimate dog.
Hear that? Off in the distance? that’s the sound of Normie not caring what the little fuzzy intends.
He would eat Metallica.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkog0sNuz9Y
:)
[liberals wouldn’t know what to do with it, especially after the last tune up...it’s running a 110” mix]
Gee... I can't imagine why.
\; )
LOL
110 inch mix??
They’re so black and *shiny*.
[seriously...can somebody mail me a few deceased ones? I have a jewelry idea]
The newly replaced computer in the bike has been programmed for a 110” motor.
Runs a little rich but OMG the G-forces are mind blowing.
Didn’t check the whole thing out, all I see is a poster and all I hear is some typical metal rock. There’s a bike in there?
Let your fingers do the walking and find Pest Control :)
Well, the tarantula is trying to be the pest control. It was walking on the ceiling looking for bugs.
It wasn’t on the youtube link.
I guess I sorta ran on, there.
In AZ thats a very expensive proposition. And they are mutant bugs. They drink Orkin juice for cocktails.
He couldn’t eat Metallica without Kirk and James lifting him into a high chair ;)
Ouch!
[LOL]
Seriously, they met him and he freaked them out.
I’m a girl and I think that’s hot as jalapenos.
;D
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