Tag: toxins

Toxins found in the skin of poison dart frogs may hitch a ride there via molecular taxicabs.

As a group, poison dart frogs (Dendrobatidae) host an assortment of more than 500 poisonous compounds called alkaloids that the amphibians acquire from a steady diet of insects (SN: 9/3/03). But how these toxins, which help to fend off predators, make it from a frog’s intestines to its skin has been a mystery.

Now, scientists have pinpointed a protein