Bombolitin is a venom peptide originally isolated from bumblebees and possesses various biological activities, including hemolytic activity. Bombolitins exhibit amphipathic α-helical structure in lipid-membrane-mimicking environments. To investigate their pharmacological and toxicological properties, anti-tumor, anti-microbial and cytotoxic activities of bombolitins from Bombus ardens and Bombus ussurensis were evaluated. Bombolitins of the two species exhibited extremely high anti-tumor activity against ovarian tumor cells SK-OV-3 and NIH; OVCAR-3 at 25-50 μM, which is 2-fold more potent than other wasp venom peptides studied to date (Yoon et al., 2015; Yoon et al., 2016). The two bombolitins showed significantly high antimicrobial activity. However, bombolotin of B. ussurensis showed no antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli. In addition to their high levels of anti-tumor activity, bombolitins showed considerable levels of hemolytic activity. Thus, to utilize bombolitins as a potential candidate for anti-tumor peptide drugs, further studies for reducing cytotoxic properties of bombolitns is essential.

The lesser paper wasp, Parapolybia varia, belongs to large subfamily Polistinae and is distributed in Middle East, the Indo-Papuan region and East Asia. P. varia is known to become aggressive when disturbed for defending their colonies, resulting in fatal envenomation. Vespid chemotactic peptide (VCP) and vespakinin have recently been determined to be the top two genes most abundantly transcribed in venom glands of P. varia. To investigate the pharmacological and toxicological properties of VCP and vespakinin, their antitumor, antimicrobial, and cytotoxic activities were evaluated. VCP exhibited a significantly high antitumor activity against ovarian tumor cell SK-OV-3 at 100 M. VCP also showed higher hemolytic activity than vespakinin. Antimicrobial activity was only observed with VCP against yeast Candida albicans at 1 mM. Since VCP showed a relatively low hemolytic activity but a considerable level of antitumor activity, it has further merits to be exploited as a potential antitumor agent with reduced side effects on normal cells.

We have analyzed the genetic diversity of 45 squash genotypes in Cucurbita maxima, C. moschata, C. pepo and uniden-tified Cucurbita spp. (noodle-squash) with molecular markers. The 45 squash accesions showed molecular variations of 87.5% inRAPD and 74.4%