Gene content of the fish-hunting cone snail <i>Conus consors</i>

Abstract

Abstract Background Conus consors is a fish-hunting cone snail that lives in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific region. Cone snails have attracted scientific interest for the amazing potency of their venom, which consists of a complex mixture of small proteins known as conopeptides, many of which act as ion channel and receptor modulators with high selectivity. Results We have analysed publicly available transcriptomic sequences from 8 tissues of Conus consors and complemented the transcriptome data with the data from genomic DNA reads. We identified 17,715 full-length protein sequences from the transcriptome. In addition, we predicted 168 full-length or partial conopeptide sequences and characterized gene structures of several conopeptide superfamilies.