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J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 281, Issue 30, 20983-20992, July 28, 2006

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Latarcins, Antimicrobial and Cytolytic Peptides from the Venom of the Spider Lachesana tarabaevi (Zodariidae) That Exemplify Biomolecular Diversity^*

From the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Miklukho-Maklaya, 16/10, 117997 Moscow, Russia

Seven novel short linear antimicrobial and cytolytic peptides named latarcins were purified from the venom of the spider Lachesana tarabaevi. These peptides were found to produce lytic effects on cells of diverse origin (Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, erythrocytes, and yeast) at micromolar concentrations. In addition, five novel peptides that share considerable structural similarity with the purified latarcins were predicted from the L. tarabaevi venom gland expressed sequence tag data base. Latarcins were shown to adopt amphipathic -helical structure in membrane-mimicking environment by CD spectroscopy. Planar lipid bilayer studies indicated that the general mode of action was scaled membrane destabilization at the physiological membrane potential consistent with the "carpet-like" model. Latarcins represent seven new structural groups of lytic peptides and share little homology with other known peptide sequences. For every latarcin, a precursor protein sequence was identified. On the basis of structural features, latarcin precursors were split into three groups: simple precursors with a conventional prepropeptide structure; binary precursors with a typical modular organization; and complex precursors, which were suggested to be cleaved into mature chains of two different types.

Received for publication, March 7, 2006 , and in revised form, April 26, 2006.

The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank^TM/EBI Data Bank with accession number(s) AM232689 [GenBank] -AM232700 [GenBank] .

^* This work was supported in part by Russian Federation Federal Agency for Science and Innovations State Contract 02.467.11.3003 [EC] (4/20/2005), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and the Program of Cellular Biology Russian Academy of Sciences Program. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

¹ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 7-495-336-6540; Fax: 7-495-330-7301; E-mail: serg{at}ibch.ru.

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