Project description:Sea nettle jellyfish cause millions of painful stings annually with little known about how their venom works and no rational treatments available. Here we perform a systematic analysis of sea nettle venom / host interactions. The venom shows dose-dependent cytotoxic activity in human cells and this can be blocked by dual inhibition of apoptosis and necroptosis. Using whole-genome CRISPR screening we identified human genes and pathways that modify venom action. The top gene cluster identified regulates proteoglycan biosynthesis. We show exogenous heparin, a drug used clinically as an anticoagulant, blocks venom cytotoxicity at a physiologically relevant dose. This effect was therapeutic, inhibiting venom even one hour after exposure. Importantly, in vivo, heparin protected against acute spontaneous pain, thermal hyperalgesia, and mechanical allodynia induced by venom. This provides the exciting possibility of repurposing heparin, a safe, commercially available drug as a prophylactic or therapeutic to reduce the impact of sea nettle stings.
Project description:The species-specific identification of fibre origin is essential in archaeology but reveals challenging for closely related species. This is particularly true between the four South American Camelids (SAC) species: alpaca, guanaco, llama and vicuña. The analysis of proteins extracted from hairs and/or yarns by proteomics has emerged as a powerful method to differentiate between species. However, for SAC, the database information available is very poor, which limits this approach. In this study, we analysed 42 modern and 4 archaeological reference samples from the four SAC species.