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Vipera berus - Venom delivery apparatus. Snake venom is a highly toxic saliva [1] containing zootoxins that facilitates in the immobilization and digestion of prey. This also provides defense against threats. Snake venom is usually injected by unique fangs during a bite, though some species are also able to spit venom. [2]
The selection pressure on snake venom is thought to be selecting for functional diversity within the proteins in venom, both within a given species, and across species. [54] In addition to prey physiology, evidence exists that snake venom has evolved in response to the physiology of predators. [13]
A drop of solution containing a venom concentration of 1 mg/ml was enough to cause contraction of the pulmonary artery adventitia after 5-8 sec in a frog weighing 40 g. [17] The study found, however, that this toxic effect is simply a tool the snake can choose to employ from an accessory venom gland it has.
Venom in medicine is the medicinal use of venoms for therapeutic benefit in treating diseases. Venom is any poisonous compound secreted by an animal intended to harm or disable another. When an organism produces a venom, its final form may contain hundreds of different bioactive elements that interact with each other inevitably producing its ...
Similarly, Iranian herpetologist Mahmoud Latifi found the lethality (LD 50) of the crude venom from the species Montivipera xanthina to be 0.42 mg/kg in a 1984 study, [11] and 0.35 mg/kg in a 1985 study, which Latifi conducted for the Department of the Environment in Iran (was translated to English in 1991).
The discovery of an orally inactive peptide from snake venom established the important role of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors in regulating blood pressure. This led to the development of captopril, the first ACE inhibitor. When the adverse effects of captopril became apparent new derivates were designed.
CroFab is composed of several monovalent Fab (fragment antigen-binding) proteins derived from the blood of sheep immunized with one of four snake venoms: Crotalus atrox (western diamondback rattlesnake), Crotalus adamanteus (Eastern diamondback rattlesnake), Crotalus scutulatus (Mojave rattlesnake), or Agkistrodon piscivorus (cottonmouth or ...
Evidence of early interest in snake venom was prevalent throughout the early 20th century with one of the first big breakthroughs being in the mid-1960s. For example, Halbert Raudonat was one of the first researchers to fractionate Cobra ( Naja nivea ) venom using a sophisticated dialysis and paper chromatography techniques. [ 14 ]