Proteomic Analysis of the Venom of Jellyfishes Rhopilema esculentum and Sanderia malayensis

Abstract

Venomics, the study of biological venoms, could potentially provide a new source of therapeutic compounds, yet information on the venoms from marine organisms, including cnidarians (sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish), is limited. This study identified the putative toxins of two species of jellyfish—edible jellyfish Rhopilema esculentum Kishinouye, 1891, also known as flame jellyfish, and Amuska jellyfish Sanderia malayensis Goette, 1886. Utilizing nano-flow liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (nLC–MS/MS), 3000 proteins were identified from the nematocysts in each of the above two jellyfish species. Forty and fifty-one putative toxins were identified in R. esculentum and S. malayensis, respectively, which were further classified into eight toxin families according to their predicted functions. Amongst the identified putative toxins, hemostasis-impairing toxins and proteases were found to be the most dominant members (>60%). The present study demonstrates the first proteomes of nematocysts from two jellyfish species with economic and environmental importance, and expands the foundation and understanding of cnidarian toxins.

Quantitative Insights into the Contribution of Nematocysts to the Adaptive Success of Cnidarians Based on Proteomic Analysis

“…All candidate toxin proteins identified by RBBH or ToxClassifier were validated by blasting against Tox-Prot UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot [ 72 ], and only proteins with the best match to toxins were retained (− e value 1 × 10 −5 ). To generate an overview of the distribution pattern of putative toxin protein families across cnidarians, a matrix of the presence and absence of toxins in the present study and 23 well-annotated nematocyst proteomes [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ] was constructed ( Dataset S2 ) and visualized. To avoid dramatically increasing the number of potential toxins that could be explored, proteomes from whole tissues (e.g., tenacles, mucus) were not included.…”

“…The nematocyst proteomes of several cnidarians have recently been published, including proteomes of some anthozoans [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], hydrozoans [ 18 , 21 , 22 , 23 ] cubozoans [ 24 , 25 ], scyphozoans [ 21 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ], and a myxozoan [ 32 ]. These pioneering studies have provided important insights into the evolutionary history of the nematocyst (for example, [ 9 , 21 , 33 ]).…”

Refinement and Neutralization Evaluation of the F(ab’)2 Type of Antivenom against the Deadly Jellyfish Nemopilema nomurai Toxins

“…Jellyfish venom is mainly composed of various toxins, including phospholipase A 2 , hemolysin, metalloprotease, potassium channel inhibitor, and C-type lectin [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Most of the jellyfish toxins are proteins with a large molecular weight, which may have good antigenicity to produce antibodies.…”

Marine Peptides: Structure, Bioactivities, and a New Hope for Therapeutic Application

“…The toxins of these mostly marine animals are of ever-increasing biomedical interest. In this Special Issue, the putative toxins of two species of jellyfish ( Rhopilema esculentum Kishinouye, 1891, also known as a flame jellyfish, and Amuska jellyfish Sanderia malayensis Goette, 1886) were identified in nematocysts [ 7 ]. Using nano-flow liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (nLC–MS/MS), in total 3000 proteins were found in the nematocysts in each of the above two jellyfish species.…”

“…The most dominant toxins (>60%) were identified as hemostasis-impairing ones and proteases. For the first time ever, the authors studied the proteomes of nematocysts from two jellyfish species [ 7 ]. Earlier, this group reported high-quality de novo reference genomes for the above jellyfish, as well as their transcriptomes [ 8 ].…”