?
Honey bee toxin Bee venom contains a variety of peptides such as melittin, apamin, adolapin and mast cell degranulating peptide. Bee venom has been used in the treatment of major neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Secondary structure analysis of apamin, mast cell degranulating peptide, tertiapin and secapin have been studied. The predicted structure for mast cell degranulating peptide is almost spherical with the eight positive centres evenly distributed over the surface. It has also been suggested that these four peptides share a common folding pattern, which is centred on a beta-turn covalently linked to an alpha-helical segment by two disulphide links. It is further suggested that apamin, mast cell degranulating peptide and tertiapin form a single molecular class. This family includes apamin and mast cell degranulating peptide. Apamin, the most widely studied member of this family has been shown to be a selective blocker of small-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ (KCa2.X or SK) channels. It is a promising anti neuroinflammatory agent that could be used to prevent and treat various neurological disorders. Apamin also blocks Kv1.3 channels and is able to inhibit neuromuscular transmission by a mechanism independent of the blockade of SK channels, which may involve the activation of inhibitory muscarinic M2 receptors on motor nerve terminals. |
Jiyao W et al.(2023). "The conserved domain database in 2023.",