October 4, 2017
A bite from a pit viper, locally
known as habu, can cause permanent disability and even death. Yet, much about
its venom remains an enigma. Highly variable in composition, even between
littermates, this toxic cocktail keeps changing over generations.
More than 50 instances of snake
bites were recorded in the past year on Okinawa alone, prefectural government
figures show. Globally, snake bites cause between 81,000 and 138,000
mortalities per year, according to the World Health Organization. In developing
countries and rural areas with high exposure to venomous species and scant medical
resources, snake
bites can be especially devastating. For such places, creating
effective antivenom can be a matter of life or death.
"For many years it was known
that snake venoms evolve very rapidly, and the most common explanation for this
has been natural selection," said Alexander Mikheyev, senior author on the
paper and head of the Ecology and Evolution Unit at the Okinawa Institute of
Science and Technology (OIST), "but there are reasons to suspect that this
might not be the only evolutionary force at work."
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