Integration of phylogenomics and molecular modeling reveals lineage-specific diversification of toxins in scorpions.

ABSTRACT: Scorpions have evolved a variety of toxins with a plethora of biological targets, but characterizing their evolution has been limited by the lack of a comprehensive phylogenetic hypothesis of scorpion relationships grounded in modern, genome-scale datasets. Disagreements over scorpion higher-level systematics have also incurred challenges to previous interpretations of venom families as ancestral or derived. To redress these gaps, we assessed the phylogenomic relationships of scorpions using the most comprehensive taxonomic sampling to date. We surveyed genomic resources for the incidence of calcins (a type of calcium channel toxin), which were previously known only from 16 scorpion species. Here, we show that calcins are diverse, but phylogenetically restricted only to parvorder Iurida, o

SUBMITTER: Santibanez-Lopez CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6240337 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature