Summary
Snake venoms are excellent sources of pharmacologically active proteins and peptides,
and hence are potential sources of leads for drug developments. It has been previously
established that krait (Bungarus genus) venoms contain mainly neurotoxins. A screening for anticoagulants showed that
Bungarus fasciatus venom exhibits potent anticoagulant effect in standard clotting assays. Through sequential
fractionation of the venom by size exclusion and high performance liquid chromatographies,
coupled with functional screening for anticoagulant activities, we have isolated and
purified two anticoagulant proteins, termed BF-AC1 (
Bungarus fasciatus anticoagulant 1) and BFAC2. They have potent inhibitory activities (IC50 of 10 nM) on the extrinsic tenase complex. Structurally, these proteins each has
two subunits covalently held together by disulfide bond(s). The N-terminal sequences
of the individual subunits of BF-AC1 and BF-AC2 showed that the larger subunit is
homologous to phospholipase A2, while the smaller subunit is homologous to Kunitz
type serine proteinase inhibitor. Functionally, in addition to their anticoagulant
activity, these proteins showed presynaptic neurotoxic effects in both in vivo and ex vivo experiments. Thus, BF-AC1 and BF-AC2 are structurally and functionally similar to
β-bungarotoxins, a class of neurotoxins. The enzymatic activity of phospholipase A2
subunit plays a significant role in the anticoagulant activities. This is the first
report on the anticoagulant activity of β-bungarotoxins and these results expand on
the existing catalogue of haemostatically active snake venom proteins.
Keywords
Anticoagulant - extrinsic tenase complex - β-bungarotoxin - phospholipase A
2
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Bungarus fasciatus