Table 1.

Comparison of recombinant expression strategies for disulfide-rich peptides. Main features of recombinant expression systems for venom peptides from cone snails, scorpion, sea anemone and spider.

Organism	Peptide Features	N-terminal Fusion Tag	Purification Method	Soluble/Insoluble	E. coli Host	Fusion Tag Cleavage	Reference
MVIIA (Conus magus)	25 aa and 3 disulfide	Thioredoxin	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	No cleavage	Zhan et al., 2003 [29]
BgK (Bunodosoma granulifera)	37 aa and 3 disulfide	S-tag (C-terminal)	S-protein	Soluble	OrigamiB (DE3) Tuner (DE3)	No cleavage	Braud et al., 2004 [30]
Mo1659 (Conus monile)	13 aa and no cysteine	Cytochrome-b5	His tag	Soluble	Bl21 (DE3)	CnBr	Kumar et al., 2005 [31]
Conkunitzin-S1 (Conus striatus)	60 aa and 2 disulfide	Chitin binding domain	His tag	Insoluble	BL21 (DE3)	Intein	Bayrhuber et al., 2006 [32]
Lt7a (Conus litteratus)	27 aa and 3 disulfide	Thioredoxin	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	Factor Xa	Pi et al., 2006 [33]
BTK-2 (Mesobuthus tamulus)	32 aa and 3 disulfide	Cytochrome-b5	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	Tev protease	Kumar et al., 2009 [34]
Vn2 (Conus ventricosus)	33 aa and 3 disulfide	Glutathione-S-transferase	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	No cleavage	Spiezia et al., 2012 [35]
PrIIIE (Conus parius)	22 aa and 3 disulfide	Small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO)	His tag	Soluble	Rosetta-gami B (DE3)	SUMO protease	Hernandez et al., 2012 [36]
MrVIB (Conus marmoreus)	31 aa and 3 disulfide	Pe1B leader signal peptide	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	No His tag cleavage	Gao et al., 2013 [37]
Huwenotoxin-IV (Ornithoctunus huwena)	35 aa and 3 disulfide	SUMO	His tag	Soluble	Shuffle T7 Express	SUMO protease	Sermadiras et al., 2013 [38]
spider, sea anemone, scorpion, cone snail, centipede	Varied length disulfide-rich peptides	Various	various	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	various	Klint et al., 2013 [23]
Framework XV conotoxins (various species)	Varied length and 4 disulfide	Thioredoxin	His tag	Soluble	BL21 (DE3)	Enterokinase	Wu et al., 2014 [39]