Snake Care

Lots of people are scared of snakes. For those of us in the UK, it’s a phobia unlikely to pose much practical threat, but around the world there are five million bites each year. Permanent muscle damage is one possible consequence of a bite, but the precise mechanism of this damage is poorly understood. To investigate, researchers purified one harmful component of viper venom: metalloproteases. To see how they causes lasting problems, they observed how muscle structure changes in the days after a bite. They found that viper venom damages structural scaffold proteins around the bite, such as collagen (red in undamaged mouse muscle, left, and deteriorating muscle 10 days after a simulated bite, right) and laminin (green). With these supporting structures impaired, future recovery and growth was halted. Studies like this aim to ultimately improve treatments and reduce the threat of snakes, wherever you live.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image adapted from work by Harry F. Williams, Ben A. Mellows and Robert Mitchell, and colleagues
• School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, January 2019