Figure 1.

A) The itch-inducing effects of 20 µL intradermal injection of crude venom extracts (20 µg/µL) from three cone snail species into the cheek of WT (C57/B6J) mice. Each dot represents an individual mouse. Data are presented as mean ± SEM. *, p<0.05**, p<0.005; two tailed unpaired t-test, ns: not significant. The p value for each crude venom compared against the control are: C. miles, p = 0.0187; C. textile, p = 0.0019; and C. geographus, p = 0.0610. B) 89% of the DRG neurons activated by the C. textile venom are CQ sensitive whereas the remaining 11% are non-responsive to chloroquine. The left Ca²⁺ imaging traces show the representative responses of chloroquine-sensitive neurons to C. textile venom. The pie chart shows the fraction of venom-sensitive neurons that respond to chloroquine C) 25% of DRG neurons activated by venom from C. geographus are CQ sensitive while a majority (75%) did not respond to chloroquine. The left panel shows a representative calcium imaging trace while the right panel shows the percentage of venom-sensitive neurons that respond to chloroquine.