Sentences with phrase «toxin gene families»

Not exact matches

These adaptations include the massive and rapid expansion of gene families that produce venom toxins, providing the snake with a highly toxic protein mixture required to overcome a variety of different prey and also circumvent any resistance to venom that may have developed in such prey.

Armed with the both the king cobra and Burmese python genome the team was able to show that, despite previous hypotheses that venom genes evolve «early» in the lineage leading to snakes, venom gene families do not duplicate early, in fact the study shows that the rapid and extensive expansion of functionally important venom toxin families is restricted to the venomous «advanced» snake lineage.

The researchers analyzed and compared the evolutionary patterns of over 3500 toxin sequences from 85 gene families.

The scientists found that the genes for each toxin family were also used in other parts of the body in the snake's evolutionary past and even today.