Safavi Lab

Helena gave a stellar tenure talk today, drawing different examples of prey-hormone mimicking, doppelgänger toxins found in cone snail venoms!

Proud to present our newly minted Dr Sophie PhD of the Safavi lab! 🐚🎓🎈🎉🎊 very well deserved for all her hard work! Also nice to see past members of the Safavi lab in Copenhagen!

What a great time at Yellowstone 🌋with @StingScience, @waldensciencing, @LundKoch, @yeung_hyw, @irisbeara and other amazing people (Lars, Celeste, Vanessa) from 🇩🇰🇦🇺who are not on the X universe. Looking forward to your next visit in Salt Lake City!

Excited to share our latest story on how fish-hunting cone snail uses a combination of weaponized insulin and somatostatin-like toxins to disrupt glucose level in its fish prey 🐚⚡️🐠🍬 Check out our paper and animation to learn more: nature.com/articles/s41467-0… @NatureComms 🧵1/5

Done with the group meeting. On our way to get lunch, good beer and milk tea :D #CaloriesDontCountOnThursdays

Awardees* got too excited. 😜 Here's the live stream link of the awarding ceremony youtube.com/watch?v=vY0yIoaB…

2/3 Further, we discuss about how these weaponised hormones can provide the medicinal chemistry that we need to develop hormone-like drugs. Our hope is that more hormone-mimics from animals and microbes will be discovered as they provide excellent leads in drug development.

Up next @waldensciencing talks about "Conotoxins inspiring peptide hormone drug development" to wrap up the afternoon session.

The entire Safavi Lab is attending the BMI Retreat with some of our members presenting our work! First stop: @lea_cecilie presenting "How to outreach" A refreshing talk on how we communicate our work on a broader audience. #conesnails

(3/5) This neuropeptide is not only found in cone snails, but also in many other invertebrates including other mollusks and annelids but not others such as arthropods.

(2/5) By looking at transcriptomes from cone snail nervous systems, we discovered an unknown neuropeptide related to somatostatin! At some point, this neuropeptide was recruited into the venom of the cone snail, where it quickly evolved into the consomatin family.

2/4 Consomatins are weaponized forms of the hormone somatostatin used by snails to sting their prey, wait for a few hours for the prey to be lethargic before ambushing, going in for the kill. The structure is much more related to the drug Octreotide than the hormone it mimics.

Excited to share our work on the discovery of a group of conotoxin used by cone snails in a fascinating "ambush-and-assess" hunting strategy! If you think cone snail insulins are cool, check out these weaponized vertebrate hormone, consomatins (1/4) tinyurl.com/4dedun6h

Incredibly happy to share our new work on cone snail insulins hybrids in collaboration with @DannyHChou and Chris Hill @UofUBiochem! These wonderful new analogs have similar activity to human insulin and provide new approaches in developing improved therapeutic insulins.