Snake Venom Components as Basis for Biologically Active Synthetic Peptides

Abstract

In this chapter, an attempt is made to collect data on synthetic peptides derived from peptide and protein components from snake venoms. The focus is on shorter fragments of natural-occurring compounds and to a lesser extent their mutant analogs. In general, these synthetic variants were prepared either to identify the ``active sites{''} of the natural molecules, as well as the structural and functional features of their targets, or to design new compounds with potential for practical use. Taking into account the huge diversity of peptide-protein components in the snake venoms (and limited volume of this Chapter), the selection of components for the review was limited to only the most important classes of compounds. Among these are myotoxins, so-called three-finger toxins, phospholipases, metalloproteinases, and disintegrins, as well as several groups of small peptides with different structure and properties which we called ``disulfide poor{''} compounds (containing two or less disulfides).