title: Hemocytome: deep sequencing analysis of mosquito blood cells in Indian malarial vector Anopheles stephensi.
abstract: Hemocytes are tiny circulating blood cells of insects known to play multiple roles in physiological as well as cellular immune responses. However, the molecular nature of hemocytes in blood feeding insects, especially mosquitoes which transmit several deadly diseases such as malaria, dengue etc. is still limited. Therefore, to know the basic molecular composition of naïve mosquito hemocyte encoded proteins, we sequenced RNA-Seq library and analyzed a total of 13,105,858 Illumina sequencing reads in the mosquito Anopheles stephensi, an urban malarial vector in India. Denovo assembly approach yielded a buildup of 3025 contigs, for molecular and functional annotation. A total of 1829 contigs (48%) could be mapped to the mosquito transcript database, while out of remaining 1196 unmatched contigs, at least 1108 contigs i.e. 40% of total contigs, yielded a significant match to the available draft genome. ImmunoDB analysis predicted a total of 88 putative hemocyte transcripts belonging to 11 immune family proteins. A comprehensive molecular analysis of several unique transcripts including novel LRR, Holotricin, OBP, NiFU, that are involved in immunity, chemo sensing, cell-cell communication, nitrogen fixation/metabolism etc. provides initial evidence that mosquito hemocytes carry unique ability to meet and manage cell specific diverse functions of the mosquito blood. An unexpected observation of abundant transcripts encoding hypothetical proteins with unknown functions indicated that a much of the hemocyte biology remains to be understood.
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Tina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Tanwee Das
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: De
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Punita
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Suman
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lata
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Priyanka
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Saraswat
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India).
authors.forename: Kailash C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Pandey
authors.affiliation: Host-Parasite Interaction Biology Group, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector-8, Dwarka, Delhi -110077, (India). Electronic address: dixit2k@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Rajnikant
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dixit
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D000852:Anopheles / Q000469:parasitology*; D001798:Blood Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D006434:Hemocytes / Q000469:parasitology*; D007303:Insect Vectors; D000090263:Leucine-Rich Repeat Proteins; D008288:Malaria / Q000635:transmission*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D001798:Blood Proteins; D000090263:Leucine-Rich Repeat Proteins; D011506:Proteins
keywords: Hemocyte; Immunity; Malaria; Mosquito; Transcriptome