(Nature) – It’s hard to imagine that a snail could kill a person, but a particularly venomous group of marine molluscs called cone snails can. Their stings contain a cocktail of small proteins called conotoxins, some of which can block ion channels in the nervous system. No antivenom exists.

There are hundreds of thousands of conotoxin structures, and many are harmless to people or even medicinally useful: an approved treatment for chronic pain is derived from one, for instance. But research on specific dangerous conotoxins is highly restricted in some countries.

So, in 2024, when Chinese scientists reported developing an artificial-intelligence tool to design conotoxins, it raised eyebrows in some quarters. (Read More)