Análise proteômica de tecidos cerebrais de camundongos da linhagem Swiss sob efeito da peçonha de Crotalus durissus terrificus

Abstract

About 2.7 million people are bitten annually by venomous snakes worldwide. Among them, there are more than 130,000 deaths and 490,000 amputations and other serious health problems caused by this type of accident. In Brazil, among the different snakes distributed throughout the country, the snakes of the Crotalus genus known popularly as rattlesnakes is the second largest responsible for accidents in the country only behind the Bothrops genus of snakes known as jararacas. Crotalus snakes venoms are known to be neurotoxic and myotoxic and although there is a wide description of the clinical and biochemical aspects of the effects of Crotalus envenoming, there are few works describing the molecular events in an organism due to its envenomation. Thus, in this study we evaluated the effect of Crotalus durissus terrificus snake venom on cerebellum of Swiss mice after 1, 6, 12 and 24 h after venom injection and evaluated their proteomic effects using high resolution mass spectrometry. Several bioinformatics tools were used to obtain an overview of the variation of over 3,600 identified proteins, different terms and biological functions of the effects of envenomation over the time up to 24 h. We were able to observe a reduction in terms involving inhibitory synapse signaling, oxidative stress, maintenance of neuronal cells, and an increase in terms involving tissue damage and apoptosis factors. This analysis allowed us to reveal possible molecular targets of the venom. These data may suggest new therapeutic approaches (i.e. directed to protein targets initially affected by the envenomation) for the treatment of envenomation by C. d. terrificus venom.