title: Sexual differences in the sialomes of the zebra tick, Rhipicephalus pulchellus.
abstract: Ticks rely exclusively on vertebrate blood for their survival. During feeding ticks inject into their hosts a sophisticated salivary potion that overcomes host hemostasis and adverse inflammatory responses. These mediators may also enhance pathogen transmission. Knowledge of the tick salivary protein repertoire may lead to vaccine targets to disrupt feeding and/or parasite transmission as well as to the discovery of novel pharmacological agents. Male saliva may also assist reproduction because males use their mouthparts to lubricate and introduce their spermatophores into the females' genital pore. The analyses of the sialomes of male and female ticks independently allow us to understand the strategy used by each gender to feed successfully. We sequenced cDNA libraries from pools of salivary glands from adult male and female Rhipicephalus pulchellus feeding at different time points, using the Illumina HiSeq protocol. De novo assembly of a total of 241,229,128 paired-end reads lead to extraction of 50,460 coding sequences (CDS), 11,277 of which had more than 75% coverage to known transcripts, or represented novel sequences, and were submitted to GenBank. Additionally, we generated the proteome, from the salivary gland extracts of male and female R. pulchellus, yielding a total of 454 and 2063 proteins respectively which were identified by one or more peptides with at least 95% confidence. The data set is presented as an annotated hyperlinked Excel spreadsheet, describing 121 putative secreted protein families. Female and male specific transcripts were identified.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This annotated R. pulchellus database represents a mining field for future experiments involving the resolution of time-dependent transcript expression in this tick species, as well as to define novel vaccine targets and discover novel pharmaceuticals. Gender specific proteins may represent different repertoires of pharmacological reagents to assist feeding by each sex, and in males may represent proteins that assist reproduction similarly to seminal proteins in other animals.
authors.affiliation: NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117456, Singapore; Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117543, Singapore. Electronic address: tan.angelina@u.nus.edu.
authors.forename: Angelina W L
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Vector Biology Section, Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Rockville MD 20852, USA. Electronic address: ifrancischetti@niaid.nih.gov.
authors.forename: Ivo M B
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Francischetti
authors.affiliation: Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 842 06 Bratislava, Slovakia. Electronic address: mirko.slovak@savba.sk.
authors.forename: Mirko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Slovak
authors.affiliation: NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117456, Singapore; Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117543, Singapore; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298-0614, USA; University of South Australia, School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia. Electronic address: dbskinim@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: R Manjunatha
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Kini
authors.affiliation: Vector Biology Section, Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Rockville MD 20852, USA. Electronic address: jribeiro@niaid.nih.gov.
authors.forename: José M C
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Ribeiro
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D060829:Arthropod Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D048494:Rhipicephalus / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D012463:Saliva / Q000378:metabolism*; D012471:Salivary Proteins and Peptides / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D012727:Sex Characteristics
chemical_list: D060829:Arthropod Proteins; D012471:Salivary Proteins and Peptides
keywords: Salivary glands; Tick; Transcriptome