Comment on Cone snails
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoIt’s got nothing to do with insulin or glucose levels, though. It blocks either sodium or potassium channels, can’t remember off the dome. Temporarily ruins the electrical conductivity of nerves.
Redacted@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Cone snails flood the water around them with weaponized insulin causing hypoglycemic shock, which i called a diabetic coma for comedic effect. So im pretty sure youre wrong here bud.
But dont argue with me, argue with yeung et al.
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50470-2
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m a biochemist and my university studied conotoxins for use as analgesics. They’re ion channel blockers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conotoxin
Redacted@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Hey so first off cool background, we can always use a better understanding of toxins.
Second off there are iirc over a thousand types of cone snails and a lot of them hunt very differently. The one i was referencing floods the waters around it with insulin (or an insulin like substance, im no biochemist) that paralyzes the fish its hunting so it can go in for the kill. As far as im reading you are referencing the snails that hunt in a rather more straightforward manner, using their terrifying harpoon. That would make sense as a matter of study, as im sure many a wayward footstep was met with a 'pooning.
They are fascinating little fellas.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
The cone snail referenced in the study you linked, Conus geographus, also has the same ion channel disrupting venom that is typical of cone snails. If you were bit by one, you’d die of paralysis, not hypoglycemia.
It does appear to use an insulin-like peptide to initially stun the fish, but the coup de grâce is from typical paralytic conotoxins.
A cool discovery nonetheless and TIL.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25301479/