analysis of some putative novel peptides from iranian scorpion venom glands, hemiscorpius lepturus, using cdna library construction

Background: to date, more than 300,000 distinct peptides have been identified in scorpion venom. however, only a limited number of these peptides have been described. objectives: we characterized some putative peptides from the venom gland cdna library of the iranian yellow scorpion hemiscorpius lepturus.methods: total rna was extracted from yellow iranian scorpion glands. single-stranded cdna (sscdna) and double-stranded cdna (dscdna) were synthesized by polymerase chain reaction (pcr). a cdna library was achieved by inserting dscdna into a special vector and subsequently transformed to chemically competent escherichia colias a host. the library was screened by culturing the liquid library on lysogeny broth (lb)-agar plates. analysis of positive clones was performed by plasmid extraction and the sequencing of the inserts. finally, all cdna sequences were analyzed and characterized by bioinformatics software. results: one hundred colonies were randomly analyzed. eighty-nine cdna sequences had acceptable quality for bioinformatics analysis. five sequences were selected for further analysis. the peptides related to these sequences were divided into two groups, non-disulfide bridge peptides (ndbp) and disulfide bridge peptides (dbp), the application of which in health and medical issues has been suggested. conclusions: the data obtained in this study may be an important resource for further in vivo and in vitro functional assays to identify valuable therapeutic peptides.