Maren Watkins

The paper identifies how neuropeptide genes in cone snails evolved into toxins through mechanisms like exon shuffling and transposable element-driven recombination, revealing dynamic genome-molecular innovation interactions.

This study characterizes conkazal-M1, a conotoxin from Conus magus, showing it acts as both a protease inhibitor and a neuroactive peptide.

The paper uses structural bioinformatics to identify a new conotoxin family with a two-finger toxin fold, revealing evolutionary relationships among rapidly evolving genes.