His findings appear in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry (August 2003), the Journal of Molecular Evolution (October 2003) and Molecular Biology and Evolution (in press). Fry has also received an Australian Research Council (ARC) grant of $250,000 over three years to continue this research.

Dr Fry is fascinated by venomous snakes and venom evolution. Last year he set off on a worldwide herpetological adventure to track down when and in what snake venom first evolved. The result was the ground-breaking discovery that snake venom developed only once in evolution and it did so about 60 million years ago, millions of years earlier than previously thought, and before the snakes we commonly think of as non-venomous even arrived on the scene.

"Contrary to popular belief, venom appears to have evolved at about the same time as advanced snakes started to appear. Even fangs and large venom glands arrived much later," says Dr Fry.

"This means the first venomous snakes evolved from the heavy-bodied swamp monsters similar to the anacondas of today. These snakes traded in their heavy muscle for speed and agility. Venom rather than muscle became the tool necessary for these snakes to capture their prey," he says.

The consequence of this is that venom is an inherent condition of virtually all advanced snakes, and that includes the assumed non-venomous species.

Dr Fry has now analysed the venoms from the many different snake lineages collected from his worldwide hunt and elsewhere, some of these were common pet-store snakes. H
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Contact: Jason Major
jmajor@unimelb.edu.au
61-3-8344-0181
University of Melbourne
14-Dec-2003