Despite the noxious effects inflicted by
Dinoponera ant's envenomation, the information about the biological properties and composition of their venom is still very limited. Ants from the genus
Dinoponera are believed to be the world's largest living ants with a body length of 3 cm. Their occurrence is restricted to tropical areas of South America. In this work, we study the venom of the giant
Dinoponera quadriceps ant collected in 4 different regions of Brazil. By using a combination of complementary mass spectrometric approaches, we aim at: (i) characterizing the venom composition of these ants; (ii) establishing a comparative analysis of the venom from four geographically different regions in Brazil. This approach
demonstrates that ant venom is a copious source of new compounds. Several pepti
des were i
dentified and selected for 鈥?em>
de novo sequencing鈥? Since most of the new pepti
des showed similarities with antimicrobial pepti
des (AMPs), antimicrobial assays were performed with the purpose of evaluating their activity. In regard to the comparative study of the four regions, we observed not only major differences in the venom compositions, but also that the venoms collected in closest areas are more similar than the ones collected in distant regions. These observations seem to highlight an adaption of the ant venoms to the local environment. Concerning the biological assays, the pepti
des called Dq-3162 and Da-3177 showed a wi
de-ranging antimicrobial activity. The characterization of new AMPs with a broad spectrum of activity and different scaffolds may aid scientists to
design new therapeutic agents and un
derstand the mechanisms of those pepti
des to interact with microbial membranes. The results obtained betoken the biotechnological potential of ant's venom.
Biological significance
For the first time this manuscript describes an extensive proteomics characterization of the D. quadriceps venom. In addition this study reports the variation in venom composition of primitive ants from 4 geographically different areas of Brazil. The results reveal the presence of ~ 335 compounds for each venom/area and inter-colony variations were observed. 16 new peptides were characterized and 2 of them were synthesized and biologically assayed. These findings highlight the considerable and still unexplored diversity of ant's venom which could be used as valuable research tools in different areas of knowledge.
