ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Production and packaging of a biological arsenal: evolution of centipede venoms under morphological constraint.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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20 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Field-Friendly, Non-Toxic Fixative for Integrated Morphological and Molecular Research in Non-Model Invertebrates.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- The gene regulatory mechanisms shaping the heterogeneity of venom production in the Cape coral snake.Genome biology · 2025Article
- Exaptation of an evolutionary constraint enables behavioural control over the composition of secreted venom in a giant centipede.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Spatial Distribution and Biochemical Characterization of Serine Peptidase Inhibitors in the Venom of the Brazilian Sea AnemoneMarine drugs · 2023Article
- Physiological constraints dictate toxin spatial heterogeneity in snake venom glands.BMC biology · 2022Article
- Modern venomics-Current insights, novel methods, and future perspectives in biological and applied animal venom research.GigaScience · 2022Article
- Evolution, Expression Patterns, and Distribution of Novel Ribbon Worm Predatory and Defensive Toxins.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
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- Characterising Functional Venom Profiles of Anthozoans and Medusozoans within Their Ecological Context.Marine drugs · 2020Review
- Mapping Enzyme Activity on Tissue by Functional Mass Spectrometry Imaging.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2020Article
- A Versatile and Robust Serine Protease Inhibitor Scaffold fromMarine drugs · 2019Article
- Parallel Evolution of Complex Centipede Venoms Revealed by Comparative Proteotranscriptomic Analyses.Molecular biology and evolution · 2019Article
- Review
- PHAB toxins: a unique family of predatory sea anemone toxins evolving via intra-gene concerted evolution defines a new peptide fold.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2018Article
- Review
- Article
- Review
- Comparative analyses of glycerotoxin expression unveil a novel structural organization of the bloodworm venom system.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Venom represents one of the most extreme manifestations of a chemical arms race. Venoms are complex biochemical arsenals, often containing hundreds to thousands of unique protein toxins. Despite their utility for prey capture, venoms are energetically expensive commodities, and consequently it is hypothesized that venom complexity is inversely related to the capacity of a venomous animal to physically subdue prey. Centipedes, one of the oldest yet least-studied venomous lineages, appear to defy this rule. Although scutigeromorph centipedes produce less complex venom than those secreted by scolopendrid centipedes, they appear to rely heavily on venom for prey capture. We show that the venom glands are large and well developed in both scutigerid and scolopendrid species, but that scutigerid forcipules lack the adaptations that allow scolopendrids to inflict physical damage on prey and predators. Moreover, we reveal that scolopendrid venom glands have evolved to accommodate a much larger number of secretory cells and, by using imaging mass spectrometry, we demonstrate that toxin production is heterogeneous across these secretory units. We propose that the differences in venom complexity between centipede orders are largely a result of morphological restrictions of the venom gland, and consequently there is a strong correlation between the morphological and biochemical complexity of this unique venom system. The current data add to the growing body of evidence that toxins are not expressed in a spatially homogenous manner within venom glands, and they suggest that the link between ecology and toxin evolution is more complex than previously thought.
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