Snake venoms are complex chemical mixtures of biologically active proteins and non-protein components. Toxins have a wide range of targets and effects to include ion channels and membrane receptors, and platelet aggregation and platelet plug formation. Toxins target these effectors and effects at high affinity and selectivity. From a pharmacological perspective, snake venom compounds are a valuable resource for drug discovery and development. However, a major challenge to drug discovery using snake venoms is isolating and analyzing the bioactive proteins and peptides in these complex mixtures. Getting molecular information from complex mixtures such as snake venoms requires proteomic analyses, generally combined with transcriptomic analyses of venom glands. The present review summarizes current knowledge and highlights important recent advances in venomics with special emphasis on contemporary separation techniques and bioinformatics that have begun to elaborate the complexity of snake venoms. Several analytical techniques such as two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, RP-HPLC, size exclusion chromatography, ion exchange chromatography, MALDI-TOF-MS, and LC-ESI-QTOF-MS have been employed in this regard. The improvement of separation approaches such as multidimensional-HPLC, 2D-electrophoresis coupled to soft-ionization (MALDI and ESI) mass spectrometry has been critical to obtain an accurate picture of the startling complexity of venoms. In the case of bioinformatics, a variety of software tools such as PEAKS also has been used successfully. Such information gleaned from venomics is important to both predicting and resolving the biological activity of the active components of venoms, which in turn is key for the development of new drugs based on these venom components.

蛇毒是生物活性蛋白质和非蛋白质成分的复杂化学混合物。毒素具有广泛的靶标和作用，包括离子通道和膜受体、血小板聚集和血小板栓子形成。毒素以高亲和力和选择性针对这些效应器和效应。从药理学角度来看，蛇毒化合物是药物发现和开发的宝贵资源。然而，使用蛇毒进行药物发现的一个主要挑战是分离和分析这些复杂混合物中的生物活性蛋白质和肽。从蛇毒等复杂混合物中获取分子信息需要蛋白质组分析，通常与毒腺转录组分析相结合。本综述总结了当前的知识，并强调了毒液学的最新重要进展，特别强调了当代分离技术和生物信息学，这些技术和生物信息学已经开始阐述蛇毒的复杂性。在这方面已采用了多种分析技术，例如二维凝胶电泳、RP-HPLC、尺寸排阻色谱法、离子交换色谱法、MALDI-TOF-MS 和 LC-ESI-QTOF-MS。多维 HPLC、二维电泳与软电离（MALDI 和 ESI）质谱联用等分离方法的改进对于获得毒液惊人复杂性的准确图像至关重要。在生物信息学方面，PEAKS等多种软件工具也得到了成功的应用。从毒液组学中收集的此类信息对于预测和解析毒液活性成分的生物活性非常重要，这反过来又是开发基于这些毒液成分的新药物的关键。