Agricultural and Biological Research

Validation of Solanum nigrum Proteins as Snake Antivenoms

Faten Dhawi

Traditionally, medicinal plants such as Solanum nigrum have been used as
antidotes for the treatment of venomous snakebites. Combining these
plants with antiserum is hypothesized to yield better results than the use of
either treatment alone. Therefore, this study aims to validate the use of
Solanum nigrum as antivenom by extracting and identifying the proteins of
this plant. The sequences of 358 Solanum nigrum proteins were submitted to
PSI-Blast to search for homologous snake proteins. The resulting 101 snake
proteins were subjected to multiple sequence alignments with the 358
Solanum nigrum proteins. A phylogenetic tree analysis resulted in 79 nodes in
26 clades, three of which contained snake proteins clustered with similar
Solanum nigrum proteins. Homology modeling and structural comparison
showed that three clustered snake proteins-5Z2G, 5THP, and 6IMF-were
similar to proteins from Solanum nigrum. The snake protein 5Z2G shared a
similarity of 18.75% with two Solanum nigrum proteins, whereas 5THP
shared only 3.85% similarity. Of the three identified snake proteins, 6IMF
B, with a similarity of 1.96%, was the least similar to Solanum nigrum
proteins. The method used in the current study validates the use of several
Solanum nigrum proteins as agents to reduce the toxicity of venomous
snakebites, specifically those of the snake Naja atra.