Ana Rita de Toledo Piza
Limace Biotecnologia, Brazil
Title: New antiviral molecules from Phyllocaulis boraceiensis mucus
Biography
Biography: Ana Rita de Toledo Piza
Abstract
Terrestrial gastropods exude mucus by the body surface, when traveling, to protect its body from mechanical injury, desiccation or contact with harmful substances. Mucus of mollusks has been studied as a source of new natural compounds with diverse biological activities as its capability of inducing proliferation and remodeling tissue and their antiviral capacity. Fungus and viruses are related to a range of infectious diseases in humans and animals. Viruses cause worldwide outbreaks and pandemics in humans and animals every year with considerable morbidity and mortality. The molecular diversity of secondary metabolites extracted from mollusks is a good alternative for the discovery of novel bioactive compounds with unique structures and diverse biological activities. Phyllocaulis boraceiensis is a hermaphroditic slug that exudes mucus, in which was detected some molecules that exhibited potent antiviral activity against Measles, Influenza, Herpes, Rubella and Zika virus. In order to identify, isolate, purify and sequence molecules present in the mucus of the land slug P. boraceiensis with antiviral action "in vitro" were used fragmentation by chromatography and mass spectrometry in order to determine the active molecules and assay of biological activity, qPCR and immunofluorescence labeling to determine the biological activity.