For people that want to read more: Wikipedia
Hunting via diabetic coma is crazy work
It’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.
Edit: I stand corrected.
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.
I’m a former biochemist and my university studied conotoxins for use as analgesics. Cone snail venom as commonly understood are ion channel blockers. I’ve not heard of what you’re mentioning until now, but when you mention “cone snail venom”, most biology people are thinking of ion channel blockers. This is their primary method of disabling prey.
If you’re bit by a cone snail and try to drink some soda to counteract the toxin, you’re going to have a bad time. They’re called cigarette snails because you’ve got time to smoke one cig before you die - and not from low blood sugar.
From your source:
For example, fish-hunting cone snails use a “motor cabal” to disrupt the propagation of action potentials at the neuromuscular junction. Motor cabal toxins include those that block presynaptic voltage-gated calcium channels (CaV), postsynaptic nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR), and voltage-gated sodium channels (NaV) on muscle cells6.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conotoxin
As of 2005, five biologically active conotoxins have been identified. Each of the five conotoxins attacks a different target:
- α-conotoxin inhibits nicotinic acetylcholine receptorsat nerves and muscles.[11]
- δ-conotoxin inhibits fast inactivation of voltage-dependent sodium channels.[12]
- κ-conotoxin inhibits potassium channels.[13]
- μ-conotoxin inhibits voltage-dependent sodium channels in muscles.[14]
- ω-conotoxin inhibits N-type voltage-dependent calcium channels.[15] Because N-type voltage-dependent calcium channels are related to algesia(sensitivity to pain) in the nervous system, ω-conotoxin has an analgesic effect: the effect of ω-conotoxin M VII A is 100 to 1000 times that of morphine.[16] Therefore, a synthetic version of ω-conotoxin M VII A has found application as an analgesic drug ziconotide (Prialt).[17]
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.
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. 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. Neat.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25301479/
Conus geographus is the most dangerous cone snail species known, with reported human fatality rates as high as 65%. Crude venom gland extracts have been used to determine animal LD50 and to aid the isolation of several potent paralytic toxins. […]The molecular composition of individual defense-evoked venom showed significant intraspecific variations, but a core of paralytic conotoxins including α-GI, α-GII, μ-GIIIA, ω-GVIA and ω-GVIIA was always present in large amounts, consistent with the symptomology and high fatality rate in humans.
i love that this ended in both of you acknowledging how cool this info is and that you can both be right in different ways, and everyone learning something new.
More info available here:
