title: Primary analysis of the expressed sequence tags in a pentastomid nymph cDNA library.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pentastomiasis is a rare zoonotic disease caused by pentastomids. Despite their worm-like appearance, they are commonly placed into a separate sub-class of the subphylum Crustacea, phylum Arthropoda. However, until now, the systematic classification of the pentastomids and the diagnosis of pentastomiasis are immature, and genetic information about pentastomid nylum is almost nonexistent. The objective of this study was to obtain information on pentastomid nymph genes and identify the gene homologues related to host-parasite interactions or stage-specific antigens.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Total pentastomid nymph RNA was used to construct a cDNA library and 500 colonies were sequenced. Analysis shows one hundred and ninety-seven unigenes were identified. In which, 147 genes were annotated, and 75 unigenes (53.19%) were mapped to 82 KEGG pathways, including 29 metabolism pathways, 29 genetic information processing pathways, 4 environmental information processing pathways, 7 cell motility pathways and 5 organismal systems pathways. Additionally, two host-parasite interaction-related gene homologues, a putative Kunitz inhibitor and a putative cysteine protease.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We first successfully constructed a cDNA library and gained a number of expressed sequence tags (EST) from pentastomid nymphs, which will lay the foundation for the further study on pentastomids and pentastomiasis.
authors: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology, Ministry of Health, World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors: Jing
authors: J
authors: Zhang
authors: Yujuan
authors: Y
authors: Shen
authors: Zhongying
authors: Z
authors: Yuan
authors: Jianhai
authors: J
authors: Yin
authors: Wei
authors: W
authors: Zang
authors: Yuxin
authors: Y
authors: Xu
authors: Weiyuan
authors: W
authors: Lu
authors: Yanjuan
authors: Y
authors: Wang
authors: Ying
authors: Y
authors: Wang
authors: Jianping
authors: J
authors: Cao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015723:Gene Library; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009758:Nymph / Q000235:genetics; D010272:Parasitic Diseases / Q000235:genetics* / Q000469:parasitology; D057078:Pentastomida / Q000235:genetics* / Q000469:parasitology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA