| Description |
Cone snails, of which there are more than 600 species, have attracted a lot of attention. Cone snails, found in warm tropical waters across the world, are predators and produce venoms comprising diverse toxins. These toxins, termed conotoxins, have been the subject of a great amount of research. While a sting from some cone snails can be lethal to humans, they show great promise in the medical field based on their incredible selectivity for their specific target. Conotoxins classified as alpha conotoxins have a large intron inserted in the middle of the gene which is removed from the transcribed RNA by a process termed splicing. The complete function of alpha conotoxin introns are not yet completely understood. My research was focused on possible functions. Genomic DNA from two cone snail species was used to obtain the sequences of two unique mature proteins as well as the introns. The intronic sequences were compared against each other within the same species and with those of different species. I found that the introns within a single species had a very high conservation rate and that the regions before and after the intron experienced different mutation rates. The introns also had some interesting stretches of repeats. These results support the hypothesis that the intron plays a specific role in the splicing mechanism for intron removal. The intron also may play a role in the conservation of certain regions of the gene while promoting hypermutation of the mature toxin. This hypermutation of the toxin region would lead to a higher chance of producing a more effective toxin and therefore would be selected for as these cone snails evolve to capture their prey more efficiently. |
