| Summary: | Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no ISPA – Instituto Universitário para obtenção de grau de Mestre na especialidade de Biologia Marinha e Conservação. Venomous marine vertebrates remain poorly studied compared to their terrestrial counterparts. Venoms are valuable resources for the discovery of new compounds with biotechnological potential, namely, in health sciences. However, to discover new proteins with pharmaceutical interest, it is necessary to acquire basic knowledge on venomous species and their venom “cocktails”. Phylogeny can be used as a roadmap to guide research in this field, by allowing to know the relationships between species and prospect about the existence of similar proteins in closely related species not yet studied. Scorpaena are known marine venomous fish, with species distributed throughout all the oceanic basins. In some NE Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea countries, they are known to be part of the range of species caught by artisanal fishing, and for causing episodes of envenomation. In this work, the phylogeny of 8 of the 9 Scorpaena species from the NE Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea was studied. This was the first phylogeny to encompass such a wide number of species of this genus. In parallel, protein profiles from five Scorpaena species were investigated, concluding that their venom profiles seem to differ in protein composition, even comparing sister species. This result supports the hypothesis of fish venoms suffering natural selection and allows to recognize the utility of phylogeny in guiding biotechnological studies with venoms from marine organisms. Os vertebrados marinhos venenosos permanecem relativamente pouco estudados quando os comparamos com os seus homólogos terrestres. Os venenos são um recurso valioso para a pesquisa de novos compostos com potencial biotecnológico, nomeadamente na área da saúde. Contudo, para conhecer novas proteínas de interesse farmacêutico, é necessário conhecer as espécies e os seus “cocktails” venenosos. A filogenia pode ser uma ferramenta ...
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