ConoServer is a database specialized in the sequence and structures of conopeptides, which are peptides expressed by carnivorous marine cone snails. A fascinating feature of these peptides is their high specificity and affinity towards human ion channels, receptors and transporters of the nervous system. This makes conopeptides an interesting resource for the physiological studies of neuroreceptors and promising drug leads. Conopeptides are further describe here and a selection of recent reviews on the subject can be found here.
Classifications. Conopeptides are classified into disulfide rich (conotoxins) and several classes of disulfide poor peptides. The three classification schemes used in ConoServer, the gene superfamilies, the cysteine frameworks, and the pharmacological families are described and analyzed here.
Post-translational modifications. Conopeptide are heavily post-translationally modified and the list of modifications found naturally or introduced artificially is provided here.
Statistics. Statistics on the currently known conopeptides are provided here. The statistics include: the relationship between conopeptide classification schemes, the sequence consensus between signal peptides of each gene superfamily, the number of entries for each cone snail species, the characteristics of conopeptides for which a three-dimensional structure was determined, the number of patented sequences, and the journal the most cited in the ConoServer.
| Number of Entries | Species Coverage | Links to UniProt, Genbank or PDB | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nucleotides | 2286 | 78 | 1814 |
| Proteins | 5318 | 100 | 4164 |
| Structures | 155 | 30 | 155 |
A large number of new gene superfamilies have been recently described (see table). This recent activity created some confusion regarding the gene superfamily B, which has been defined three times in recent publications: Puillandre,N. et al. (2012) J. Mol. Evol. 74:297-309, Dutertre,S. et al. (2013) Mol. Cell Proteomics 12:312-329 and Luo,S. et al. (2013) PLoS ONE [ahead]. To resolve this conflict, the nomenclature was changed as follow using the order of publication date: "gene superfamily B1" (conantokins) is from Puillandre et al. 2012, "gene superfamily B2" is from Dutertre et al. 2013, and "gene superfamily B3" is from Luo et al. 2013.
ConoServer is managed at the Institute of Molecular Bioscience IMB, Brisbane, Australia.
The database and computational tools found on this website may be used for academic research only, provided that it is referred to ConoServer, the database of conotoxins (http://www.conoserver.org) and the above reference is cited. For any other use please contact David Craik (d.craik@imb.uq.edu.au).
Contacts:
David Craik
Quentin Kaas
Last updated: Monday 20 May 2013