Bioactivity profiling of spider venoms reveals predominant hyaluronidase activities

Spider venoms are primarily composed of small neurotoxic peptides. However, recent studies suggested a hitherto overlooked diversity of spider venom enzymes, although their functional space still remains largely unexplored. We tested 10 spider venoms for enzymatic activities covering six enzyme classes and found that all tested enzymatic activities can be detected in at least some of the venoms and that hyaluronidases exhibit particularly high enzymatic activities. With this, our study provides functional evidence for the proposed biological significance of enzymes in spider venoms, but more detailed investigations are required.