Invited Speaker 11th Asia-Pacific Congress of the International Society on Toxinology 2021

More than histamine: a novel family of neurotoxic peptides mediate pain following envenomation by the Gympie stinger Dendrocnide excelsa  (#17)

Irina Vetter 1 , Edward Gilding 1 , Sina Jami 1 , Jennifer Deuis 1 , Mathilde Israel 2 , Peta Harvey 1 , Aaron Poth 1 , Fabian Rehm 1 , Jennifer Stow 1 , Samuel Robinson 1 , Kuok Yap 1 , Darren Brown 1 , Brett Hamilton 1 , David Andersson 2 , David Craik 1 , Thomas Durek 1
  1. University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia
  2. King's College, London, United Kingdom

Stinging Trees from Australasia produce remarkably persistent and painful stings upon contact of their stiff epidermal hairs, called trichomes, with mammalian skin. Dendrocnide-induced acute pain typically lasts for several hours and intermittent painful flares can persist for days and weeks. Our recent work shows that the venoms of Australian Dendrocnide species contain heretofore unknown pain-inducing peptides that potently activate sensory neurons and delay inactivation of voltage-gated sodium channels. These neurotoxins localize specifically to the stinging hairs and are miniproteins of 4 kDa whose 3D structure is stabilized in an inhibitory cystine knot motif, a characteristic shared with neurotoxins found in spider and cone snail venoms.  Our results provide an intriguing example of inter-kingdom convergent evolution of animal and plant venoms with shared modes of delivery, molecular structure and pharmacology.