Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa

A specialized insulin was recently found in the venom of a fish-hunting cone snail, Conus geographus. Here we show that many worm-hunting and snail-hunting cones also express venom insulins, and that this novel gene family has diversified explosively. Cone snails express a highly conserved insulin i...

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Main Authors:	Safavi-Hemami, Helena, Lu, Aiping, Li, Qing, Fedosov, Alexander E., Biggs, Jason, Showers Corneli, Patrice, Seger, Jon, Yandell, Mark, Olivera, Baldomero M.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Oxford University Press 2016
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5062327/

id	pubmed-5062327
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-50623272016-10-14 Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa Safavi-Hemami, Helena Lu, Aiping Li, Qing Fedosov, Alexander E. Biggs, Jason Showers Corneli, Patrice Seger, Jon Yandell, Mark Olivera, Baldomero M. Discoveries A specialized insulin was recently found in the venom of a fish-hunting cone snail, Conus geographus. Here we show that many worm-hunting and snail-hunting cones also express venom insulins, and that this novel gene family has diversified explosively. Cone snails express a highly conserved insulin in their nerve ring; presumably this conventional signaling insulin is finely tuned to the Conus insulin receptor, which also evolves very slowly. By contrast, the venom insulins diverge rapidly, apparently in response to biotic interactions with prey and also possibly the cones’ own predators and competitors. Thus, the inwardly directed signaling insulins appear to experience predominantly purifying sele\ction to target an internal receptor that seldom changes, while the outwardly directed venom insulins frequently experience directional selection to target heterospecific insulin receptors in a changing mix of prey, predators and competitors. Prey insulin receptors may often be constrained in ways that prevent their evolutionary escape from targeted venom insulins, if amino-acid substitutions that result in escape also degrade the receptor’s signaling functions. Oxford University Press 2016-11 2016-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC5062327/ /pubmed/27524826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msw174 Text en © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Safavi-Hemami, Helena Lu, Aiping Li, Qing Fedosov, Alexander E. Biggs, Jason Showers Corneli, Patrice Seger, Jon Yandell, Mark Olivera, Baldomero M.
spellingShingle	Safavi-Hemami, Helena Lu, Aiping Li, Qing Fedosov, Alexander E. Biggs, Jason Showers Corneli, Patrice Seger, Jon Yandell, Mark Olivera, Baldomero M. Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
author_facet	Safavi-Hemami, Helena Lu, Aiping Li, Qing Fedosov, Alexander E. Biggs, Jason Showers Corneli, Patrice Seger, Jon Yandell, Mark Olivera, Baldomero M.
author_sort	Safavi-Hemami, Helena
title	Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
title_short	Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
title_full	Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
title_fullStr	Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
title_full_unstemmed	Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa
title_sort	venom insulins of cone snails diversify rapidly and track prey taxa
description	A specialized insulin was recently found in the venom of a fish-hunting cone snail, Conus geographus. Here we show that many worm-hunting and snail-hunting cones also express venom insulins, and that this novel gene family has diversified explosively. Cone snails express a highly conserved insulin in their nerve ring; presumably this conventional signaling insulin is finely tuned to the Conus insulin receptor, which also evolves very slowly. By contrast, the venom insulins diverge rapidly, apparently in response to biotic interactions with prey and also possibly the cones’ own predators and competitors. Thus, the inwardly directed signaling insulins appear to experience predominantly purifying sele\ction to target an internal receptor that seldom changes, while the outwardly directed venom insulins frequently experience directional selection to target heterospecific insulin receptors in a changing mix of prey, predators and competitors. Prey insulin receptors may often be constrained in ways that prevent their evolutionary escape from targeted venom insulins, if amino-acid substitutions that result in escape also degrade the receptor’s signaling functions.
publisher	Oxford University Press
publishDate	2016
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5062327/
_version_	1613682447438839808

Venom Insulins of Cone Snails Diversify Rapidly and Track Prey Taxa

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