Toxins and GPCRs : A promising Interaction

Orateur : Denis SERVENT (CEA, iBiTecS, Service d’Ingénierie Moléculaire des Protéines (Simopro))

The venom of poisonous animals such as snakes, spiders, scorpions or cone snails contain potentially tens of millions of toxins from which only very few have been so far identified and characterized. These toxins disrupt primarily the function of the central and peripheral nervous system, the cardiovascular system or the hemostasis by mainly interacting with ion channels or enzymes governing these physiological processes. Surprisingly, very few toxins are known to interact with a receptor family that plays a major physiological role : the G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). We have focused our studies on such interactions by (i) identifying new toxins targeting these receptors and which could be exploited for therapeutic applications, (ii) conducting structure-function studies to understand at the molecular level how these toxins interact with their targeted receptors or (iii) by engineering new toxins with novel properties. Examples of these different aspects will be presented in the conference.

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