ArticlePloS one2012
The lethal toxin from Australian funnel-web spiders is encoded by an intronless gene.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Venom Revolution in Biomedicine: Unlocking Nature's Toxin Toolkit for Therapeutic Innovation.Toxicology reports · 2026Review
- Ancient origin and dynamic evolution of bivalent spider toxins.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Gene sequence analysis of toxins from the spiderThe journal of venomous animals and toxins including tropical diseases · 2020Article
- Venomics: A Mini-Review.High-throughput · 2018Review
- Gene structure, regulatory control, and evolution of black widow venom latrotoxins.FEBS letters · 2014Article
- Poisonous Spiders: Bites, Symptoms, and Treatment; an Educational Review.Emergency (Tehran, Iran) · 2014Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Australian funnel-web spiders are generally considered the most dangerous spiders in the world, with envenomations from the Sydney funnel-web spider Atrax robustus resulting in at least 14 human fatalities prior to the introduction of an effective anti-venom in 1980. The clinical envenomation syndrome resulting from bites by Australian funnel-web spiders is due to a single 42-residue peptide known as δ-hexatoxin. This peptide delays the inactivation of voltage-gated sodium channels, which results in spontaneous repetitive firing and prolongation of action potentials, thereby causing massive neurotransmitter release from both somatic and autonomic nerve endings. Here we show that δ-hexatoxin from the Australian funnel-web spider Hadronyche versuta is produced from an intronless gene that encodes a prepropeptide that is post-translationally processed to yield the mature toxin. A limited sampling of genes encoding unrelated venom peptides from this spider indicated that they are all intronless. Thus, in distinct contrast to cone snails and scorpions, whose toxin genes contain introns, spiders may have developed a quite different genetic strategy for evolving their venom peptidome.
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Registered trials
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