Description of the transcriptomes of immune response-activated hemocytes from the mosquito vectors Aedes aegypti and Armigeres subalbatus.
Mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue, malaria, and lymphatic filariasis, exact a devastating toll on global health and economics, killing or debilitating millions every year (54). Mosquito innate immune responses are at the forefront of concerted research efforts aimed at defining potential target genes that could be manipulated to engineer pathogen resistance in vector populations. We aimed to describe the pivotal role that circulating blood cells (called hemocytes) play in immunity by generating a total of 11,952 Aedes aegypti and 12,790 Armigeres subalbatus expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences from immune response-activated hemocyte libraries. These ESTs collapsed into 2,686 and 2,107 EST clusters, respectively. The clusters were used to adapt the web-based interface for annotating bacterial genomes called A Systematic Annotation Package for Community Analysis of Genomes (ASAP) for analysis of ESTs. Each cluster was categorically characterized and annotated in ASAP based on sequence similarity to five sequence databases. The sequence data and annotations can be viewed in ASAP at https://asap.ahabs.wisc.edu/annotation/php/ASAP1.htm. The data presented here represent the results of the first high-throughput in vivo analysis of the transcriptome of immunocytes from an invertebrate. Among the sequences are those for numerous immunity-related genes, many of which parallel those employed in vertebrate innate immunity, that have never been described for these mosquitoes. The sequences and annotations presented in this paper have been submitted to GenBank under accession numbers AY 431103 to AY 433788 (Aedes aegypti) and AY 439334 to AY 441440 (Armigeres subalbatus).
Bartholomay
Lyric C
LC
Department of Animal Health and Biomedical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1656 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
Cho
Wen-Long
WL
Rocheleau
Thomas A
TA
Boyle
Jon P
JP
Beck
Eric T
ET
Fuchs
Jeremy F
JF
Liss
Paul
P
Rusch
Michael
M
Butler
Katherine M
KM
Wu
Roy Chen-Chih
RC
Lin
Shih-Pei
SP
Kuo
Hang-Yen
HY
Tsao
I-Yu
IY
Huang
Chiung-Yin
CY
Liu
Tze-Tze
TT
Hsiao
Kwang-Jen
KJ
Tsai
Shih-Feng
SF
Yang
Ueng-Cheng
UC
Nappi
Anthony J
AJ
Perna
Nicole T
NT
Chen
Chen-Cheng
CC
Christensen
Bruce M
BM
D000330:Aedes / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D006434:Hemocytes / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*; D007107:Immune System / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012313:RNA / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology
D012313:RNA