An international consortium coordinated by CIIMAR researcher Agostinho Antunes proposes a “Web of Venom” type platform to respond to the immense volume of data and interdisciplinarity in the area of venoms and toxins.
An international consortium coordinated by CIIMAR researcher Agostinho Antunes has gathered and consolidated all the needs for centralizing worldwide research into venoms and toxins and is proposing a “Web of Venom” type platform to respond to the immense volume of data and interdisciplinarity in the area. The aim is to facilitate the work of researchers and speed up future large-scale research.
As a result of such intense brainstorming among leading researchers in the field of animal venoms, the idea was launched to compose, select and exploit a unified venom-specific database that would report venoms and toxins from various animal species, including genome architecture and function, toxin targets, mechanism of action as well as ecological and evolutionary data. This “Web of Venom” – would be powered by the collaboration and concerted efforts of researchers, doctors and organizations in venom research and its applications.
Animal venoms have intrigued human curiosity for centuries and, recently, technological advances in various areas of research, especially molecular biology, have generated growing interest in the scientific community. What is special about these venomous organisms to arouse this interest? They possess an impressive ability to produce and release potent cocktails of bioactive compounds, known as venoms, which can induce significant physiological effects in other species. These complex mixtures of proteins, peptides, small organic molecules and inorganic elements have been shaped over millions of years of evolution, mainly due to selective pressure, such as predation and defense.
The emergence and integration of multiomic technologies, such as proteomics, transcriptomics and, more recently, whole genome data, have revolutionized the characterization of venom components and highlighted their biotechnological potential. This focus has attracted the attention of industry, which recognizes the potential of animal toxins as candidates for new drugs, diagnostic tools, biopesticides, antimicrobial and antiparasitic agents, as well as biological markers for the study of human physiology.
The use of this increasingly voluminous data in research into animal venoms and their components encompasses various disciplines such as biology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, pharmacology, medicine and many others. This requires the manipulation and analysis of an immense amount of data scattered across different platforms, which makes it difficult to access for those who are not experts in the field. At the same time, the growth in the amount of data available exponentially increases the possibilities for research, making its centralization even more pertinent.
According to CIIMAR researcher Agostinho Antunes, “as venom data accumulates, the challenge evolves towards more sophisticated comparative discoveries of multi-omics data integration using artificial intelligence, facilitating a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of biological systems and their underlying mechanisms.” But this requires centralizing, organizing and standardizing this data.
The urgency of centralizing biological data
Facing a challenge of this scale requires centralized and coordinated web-based resources that can serve as data and knowledge repositories, facilitating the continuous use of analytical tools, bioinformatics pipelines and related databases, ultimately boosting cutting-edge venom research.
In the article “Web of venom: exploration of big data resources in animal toxin research”, researchers from around the world addressed the multifaceted needs of the scientific community involved in venom and toxin research, identifying and discussing web resources, databases and tools commonly used and highlighting the challenges they face on a daily basis in accessing and using these resources. In this work, the researchers highlight the importance of improving standards, promoting interoperability and encouraging the sharing of data and methods within the venom research community. The need to ensure the accessibility and standardization of this data is highlighted, especially when it comes to making it available to clinical communities who can use this knowledge to treat patients on a daily basis.
An integrating platform
Agostinho Antunes demonstrates the advantages of an accessible platform: “By consolidating such diverse information into a single resource or interface uniting a number of resources, scientists working in the interdisciplinary field of animal venoms and toxins would have a valuable tool at their disposal. It would allow them to access general and specific information on a vast number of venomous species and toxins and reduce the time spent on extensive literature searches.” This resource could also make a significant contribution to venom research by facilitating the classification of venom proteins, assisting in the design of peptides with desired pharmacological properties and identifying potential interactions.
In this sense, in the context of the article published in the journal GigaScience, the researchers have also compiled an interactive table available on the VenomZone website of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, which they consider to be a good starting point for launching a big data platform on research into animal venoms and toxins that would reach out to tools of all kinds, including artificial intelligence and procedural computing.
“The standardization of data, advanced computational methods such as artificial intelligence, and the interpretation of different types of data are key to providing significant advances. Progress towards meeting the needs of the venom research community requires the establishment of a dedicated venom-specific computational resource that we hope to help contribute to very soon,” says Agostinho Antunes.
