It was first isolated and purified by Brazilian scientist José Moura Gonçalves, and later intensively studied by his group of collaborators at the Medical School of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo (C.R. Laure, A. Haddad, F.L. De Lucca and J.R. Giglio, among others).
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The gene and chromosome location responsible for its synthesis have been identified by the group led by Gandhi Rádis-Baptista, working at the Instituto Butantan, in São Paulo, Brazil.
The first myotoxin to be identified and isolated was crotamine, from the venom of Crotalus durissus terrificus, a tropical South American rattlesnake, by Brazilian scientist José Moura Gonçalves, in the 1950s.