ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2019
Many Options, Few Solutions: Over 60 My Snakes Converged on a Few Optimal Venom Formulations.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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34 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinct constraints but shared dynamics shape the macroevolution of volatile organic compound chemodiversity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A Paradigm Shift in Snakebite Envenoming Therapy: From Conventional Antivenoms to Rationally Designed, Broadly Neutralizing Combination Therapies.ACS pharmacology & translational science · 2026Review
- Cross-continental venom narratives: proteo-transcriptomic insights into Hydrophis cyanocinctus of India and China.Archives of toxicology · 2026Article
- Article
- Venom Variation as a Window into the Ecology and Evolution of Snakes.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Review
- Proteome Analysis of the Six-Eyed Sand-SpiderToxins · 2025Article
- Prey Shifts Drive Venom Evolution in Cone Snails.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Identification and Evolutionary Analysis of the Widely Distributed CAP Superfamily in Spider Venom.Toxins · 2024Article
- Coming of age in venom research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Venom trade-off shapes interspecific interactions, physiology, and reproduction.Science advances · 2024Article
- Article
- Article
- Whole Genome Duplication and Gene Evolution in the Hyperdiverse Venomous Gastropods.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Independent Recruitment of Different Types of Phospholipases A2 to the Venoms of Caenophidian Snakes: The Rise of PLA2-IIE within Pseudoboini (Dipsadidae).Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Micro and macroevolution of sea anemone venom phenotype.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Vexitoxins: conotoxin-like venom peptides from predatory gastropods of the genusProceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Divergent Specialization of Simple Venom Gene Profiles among Rear-Fanged Snake Genera (Toxins · 2022Article
- Venom Gene Sequence Diversity and Expression Jointly Shape Diet Adaptation in Pitvipers.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Co-option of the same ancestral gene family gave rise to mammalian and reptilian toxins.BMC biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gene expression changes contribute to complex trait variations in both individuals and populations. However, the evolution of gene expression underlying complex traits over macroevolutionary timescales remains poorly understood. Snake venoms are proteinaceous cocktails where the expression of each toxin can be quantified and mapped to a distinct genomic locus and traced for millions of years. Using a phylogenetic generalized linear mixed model, we analyzed expression data of toxin genes from 52 snake species spanning the 3 venomous snake families and estimated phylogenetic covariance, which acts as a measure of evolutionary constraint. We find that evolution of toxin combinations is not constrained. However, although all combinations are in principle possible, the actual dimensionality of phylomorphic space is low, with envenomation strategies focused around only four major toxin families: metalloproteases, three-finger toxins, serine proteases, and phospholipases A2. Although most extant snakes prioritize either a single or a combination of major toxin families, they are repeatedly recruited and lost. We find that over macroevolutionary timescales, the venom phenotypes were not shaped by phylogenetic constraints, which include important microevolutionary constraints such as epistasis and pleiotropy, but more likely by ecological filtering that permits a small number of optimal solutions. As a result, phenotypic optima were repeatedly attained by distantly related species. These results indicate that venoms evolve by selection on biochemistry of prey envenomation, which permit diversity through parallelism, and impose strong limits, since only a few of the theoretically possible strategies seem to work well and are observed in extant snakes.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.