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Echidna venom gland transcriptome provides insights into the evolution of monotreme venom
Citation
Wong, ESW and Nicol, S and Warren, WC and Belov, K, Echidna venom gland transcriptome provides insights into the evolution of monotreme venom, PLoS One, 8, (11) Article e79092. ISSN 1932-6203 (2013) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright 2013 Wong et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
DOI: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079092
Abstract
Monotremes (echidna and platypus) are egg-laying mammals. One of their most unique characteristic is that males have venom/crural glands that are seasonally active. Male platypuses produce venom during the breeding season, delivered via spurs, to aid in competition against other males. Echidnas are not able to erect their spurs, but a milky secretion is produced by the gland during the breeding season. The function and molecular composition of echidna venom is as yet unknown. Hence, we compared the deeply sequenced transcriptome of an in-season echidna crural gland to that of a platypus and searched for putative venom genes to provide clues into the function of echidna venom and the evolutionary history of monotreme venom. We found that the echidna venom gland transcriptome was markedly different from the platypus with no correlation between the top 50 most highly expressed genes. Four peptides found in the venom of the platypus were detected in the echidna transcriptome. However, these genes were not highly expressed in echidna, suggesting that they are the remnants of the evolutionary history of the ancestral venom gland. Gene ontology terms associated with the top 100 most highly expressed genes in echidna, showed functional terms associated with steroidal and fatty acid production, suggesting that echidna "venom" may play a role in scent communication during the breeding season. The loss of the ability to erect the spur and other unknown evolutionary forces acting in the echidna lineage resulted in the gradual decay of venom components and the evolution of a new role for the crural gland.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | monotreme, echidna venom, spur, transcriptome |
| Research Division: | Biological Sciences |
| Research Group: | Zoology |
| Research Field: | Comparative physiology |
| Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
| Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
| Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences |
| UTAS Author: | Nicol, S (Associate Professor Stewart Nicol) |
| ID Code: | 88812 |
| Year Published: | 2013 |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 15 |
| Deposited By: | Zoology |
| Deposited On: | 2014-02-17 |
| Last Modified: | 2017-11-01 |
| Downloads: | 365 View Download Statistics |
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