Navegando por Palavras-chave "animal toxin"

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    Membrane-translocating peptides and toxins: from nature to bedside
    (Sociedade Brasileira de Química, 2008-01-01) Rádis-Baptista, Gandhi; Kerkis, Alexandre; Prieto-Silva, Álvaro Rossan; Hayashi, Mirian Akemi Furuie [UNIFESP]; Kerkis, Irina; Tetsuo, Yamane; Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Departamento de Bioquímica; Clínica e Centro de Pesquisa em Reprodução Humana Roger Abdelmassih; Instituto Butantan Laboratório de Herpetologia; Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP); Instituto Butantan Centro de Toxinologia Aplicada; Instituto Butantan Laboratório de Genética; Centro de Biotecnologia da Amazônia; Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares
    Today, different functional classes of bioactive peptides and toxins isolated from diverse sources of living organisms are known. In medicine, these polypeptides present the potential to be used structurally unmodified or to serve as templates for molecular design of improved derivatives. Here, we refer to members of three classes of remarkable peptides and toxins that act at the cell membranes level and membrane trafficking systems: (i) the binary toxins (ii) the antimicrobial peptides and (iii) the cell penetrating peptides. Binary toxins have been genetically manipulated to generate specific immunotoxins, while antimicrobial peptides are in use as alternative agents against resistant microbes and tumor cells. Cell penetrating peptides have applications as diverse as cell transfection and transport of nanomaterials. Our group is dissecting the capacity of crotamine, a peptide from rattlesnake venom, to translocate cell membranes and use it as a delivery system in the transducing technology and molecular imaging.