Toxins found in the skin of poison dart frogs may hitch a ride there via molecular taxicabs.
Now, scientists have pinpointed a protein that can give at least some poisons a ride. The protein, dubbed alkaloid binding globulin, or ABG, might pick up alkaloids from a frog’s blood or intestines and transport the toxins to the skin as a chemical defense, researchers report December 19 in eLife. The newly identified protein shares similarities with other proteins that transport hormones in mammals. Such a resemblance might help scientists develop comparable proteins that could, for example, soak up toxins to treat human overdoses.
It’s the first time researchers have identified a protein that transports poisons around dart frogs’ bodies, says Roberto Márquez, an evolutionary geneticist and herpetologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who was not involved in the work.
Researchers have long thought that there must be a big metabolic component to how “poison frogs exist just as a ball of toxins,” Márquez says. Proteins capable of binding to alkaloids were primary suspects, he says, because that would allow you to get toxins from your diet, “move them to your skin and not die trying.”
2024-01-08 11:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org
rnrn
Toxins found in the skin of poison dart frogs may hitch a ride there via molecular taxicabs.
Now, scientists have pinpointed a protein that can give at least some poisons a ride. The protein, dubbed alkaloid binding globulin, or ABG, might pick up alkaloids from a frog’s blood or intestines and transport the toxins to the skin as a chemical defense, researchers report December 19 in eLife. The newly identified protein shares similarities with other proteins that transport hormones in mammals. Such a resemblance might help scientists develop comparable proteins that could, for example, soak up toxins to treat human overdoses.
It’s the first time researchers have identified a protein that transports poisons around dart frogs’ bodies, says Roberto Márquez, an evolutionary geneticist and herpetologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who was not involved in the work.
Researchers have long thought that there must be a big metabolic component to how “poison frogs exist just as a ball of toxins,” Márquez says. Proteins capable of binding to alkaloids were primary suspects, he says, because that would allow you to get toxins from your diet, “move them to your skin and not die trying.”
2024-01-08 11:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org
rnrn