title: The sialotranscriptome of Amblyomma triste, Amblyomma parvum and Amblyomma cajennense ticks, uncovered by 454-based RNA-seq.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Tick salivary constituents antagonize inflammatory, immune and hemostatic host responses, favoring tick blood feeding and the establishment of tick-borne pathogens in hosts during hematophagy. Amblyomma triste, A. cajennense and A. parvum ticks are very important in veterinary and human health because they are vectors of the etiological agents for several diseases. Insights into the tick salivary components involved in blood feeding are essential to understanding vector-pathogen-host interactions, and transcriptional profiling of salivary glands is a powerful tool to do so. Here, we functionally annotated the sialotranscriptomes of these three Amblyomma species, which allowed comparisons between these and other hematophagous arthropod species.
  
  
  METHODS
  mRNA from the salivary glands of A. triste, A. cajennense and A. parvum ticks fed on different host species were pyrosequenced on a 454-Roche platform to generate four A. triste (nymphs fed on guinea pigs and females fed on dogs) libraries, one A. cajennense (females fed on rabbits) library and one was A. parvum (females fed on dogs) library. Bioinformatic analyses used in-house programs with a customized pipeline employing standard assembly and alignment algorithms, protein databases and protein servers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Each library yielded an average of 100,000 reads, which were assembled to obtain contigs of coding sequences (CDSs). The sialotranscriptome analyses of A. triste, A. cajennense and A. parvum ticks produced 11,240, 4,604 and 3,796 CDSs, respectively. These CDSs were classified into over 100 distinct protein families with a wide range of putative functions involved in physiological and blood feeding processes and were catalogued in annotated, hyperlinked spreadsheets. We highlighted the putative transcripts encoding saliva components with critical roles during parasitism, such as anticoagulants, immunosuppressants and anti-inflammatory molecules. The salivary content underwent changes in the abundance and repertoire of many transcripts, which depended on the tick and host species.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The annotated sialotranscriptomes described herein richly expand the biological knowledge of these three Amblyomma species. These comprehensive databases will be useful for the characterization of salivary proteins and can be applied to control ticks and tick-borne diseases.
authors.forename: Gustavo Rocha
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.forename: Luiz Gustavo
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Gardinassi
authors.forename: José Marcos
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Ribeiro
authors.forename: Elen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Anatriello
authors.forename: Beatriz Rossetti
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.forename: Higo Nasser Santanna
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Moreira
authors.forename: Cláudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mafra
authors.forename: Maria Marlene
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.forename: Matias Pablo Juan
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Szabó
authors.forename: Isabel Kinney Ferreira
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: de Miranda-Santos
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Immunology, Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. srmaruyama@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Sandra Regina
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Maruyama
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D060829:Arthropod Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D026863:Ixodidae / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D021141:Nucleic Acid Amplification Techniques; D012313:RNA / Q000235:genetics; D012463:Saliva / Q000737:chemistry*; D012469:Salivary Glands / Q000378:metabolism; D013045:Species Specificity; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D060829:Arthropod Proteins; D012313:RNA