My laboratory is interested in the properties of snake venom components that might have some therapeutic or other benefits to humankind. It is known that many different snake venoms contain enzymes and other proteins that can affect blood clotting by acting as either an anti-coagulant (prevents blood clotting) or as a fibrinolytic agent (dissolves blood clots). The Florida Cottonmouth Snake ( Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti ) is one such snake whose venom contains an enzyme, apcfib, which is capable of hydrolyzing fibrin, the protein which holds the platelets together in the blood clot. The enzyme has not been studied much and so our laboratory is interested in isolating and studying this enzyme for its biochemical properties (structure and function) as well as its potential to treat heart attacks and strokes by dissolving unwanted blood clots and for removing blood stains from clothes.
Undergraduate students perform almost all the experiments on this research project and have been involved from the very beginning. Current research is focused on two areas. First, the enzyme must be purified to study its biochemical properties and to test its effectiveness in dissolving blood clots in vivo. So far the fibrinolytic enzyme is about 60% pure based upon SDS gel electrophoresis after passing the crude venom over a hydrophobic interaction column and then the active fractions over a hydroxyapatite column. Other columns have been tested, but so far have been unsuccessful. We will next test an IDA (Iminodiacetic acid) column that will bind to metals as we have evidence to indicate that our enzyme is a metalloprotease. The second project is using the partially purified enzyme to determine how effective it is at removing blood stains from clothes. Because the enzyme breaks down fibrin, we hypothesized that the enzyme could help loosen the blood on the clothes before washing. Preliminary results indicate that the enzyme plus detergent is about 15-20% more effective at removing the blood stains than the detergent alone. Students, Ryan Guillory and Mandar Khanal, presented the results of this work at the American Chemical Society Meeting in Anaheim on March 29, 2004. Future work involves experimenting with various parameters to try to optimize conditions for removing the blood stains with our enzyme. Grants Funded to Support this research Research Corporation Whittier College Faculty Research Grant Students who have worked on the project
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