It is possible, therefore, that this group of peptides may be functionally related to neurotoxicity during the envenoming process; however, determining their precise role will require much more experimentation. These peptides also have high values of Boman free energy index, indicating possible interaction with proteins (receptors) (Fig. 4B). In general, it is difficult to determine the specific biological activity of novel peptides based solely on their amino acid sequences, especially in the venoms from the social

Hymenoptera, in which novel peptides are being described frequently, with a complex panel of biological activities, characteristically of polyfunctional nature. Using the “trial and error” approach may be laborious, expensive and time consuming due to the potentially enormous number of different experimental setups of Venetoclax mouse HDAC inhibitor pharmacological/physiological assays that are required to minimally cover a reasonable number of biological assays. However, nature offers some interesting systems of biologically active peptides that are structurally and functionally well characterized, and reliably documented

in the literature, which can be used as “models” to investigate the relationship between a series of intrinsic physicochemical parameters of these peptides and their biological activities. Thus, we chose 166 peptides from the venoms and hemolymphs of Hymenoptera insects as a

virtual library (biological model) selleck chemical and applied a mathematical model of multivariate analysis with nine different chemometric components (corresponding to the most investigated physicochemical descriptors of peptides): GRAVY, aliphaticity of the side chain of the amino acid residues of each peptide chain, number of disulfide bonds, total residues, net charge, pI value, CDM prediction of alpha helix, flexibility, and Boman index. PCA with Partial Least Squares Regression was performed with these data. While being constructed, this virtual system was blinded from any information about the biological activity of the peptides; however, this analysis permitted the grouping of peptides in a way strongly correlated to their biological function. Six different groupings were observed, which seemed to correspond to the following classes: chemotactic peptides, mastoparans, tachykinins, kinins, antibiotic peptides and a group of long peptides with one or two disulfide bonds and biological activities that are not yet clearly defined. The partial overlapping between the groups of mastoparans with chemotactic peptides, tachykinins, kinins and antibiotic peptides in the PCA score plot (Fig. 2) may be used to explain frequent reports in the literature about the multifunctionality of some of these peptides.