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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Hilo, Hawaii » Daniel K. Inouye U.S. Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center » Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #265521
Title: A further insight into the sialome of the tropical bont tick, Amblyomma variegatum

Author
item RIBEIRO, JOSE - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)
item ANDERSON, JENNIFER - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)
item Manoukis, Nicholas
item MENG, ZHAOJING - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)
item FRANCISCHETTI, IVO - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)

Submitted to: BMC Genomics
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/1/2011
Publication Date: 3/1/2011
Citation: Ribeiro, J.M., Anderson, J.M., Manoukis, N., Meng, Z., Francischetti, I.M. 2011. A further insight into the sialome of the tropical bont tick, Amblyomma variegatum. Biomed Central (BMC) Genomics. 12:136.

Interpretive Summary: Ticks - vectors of medical and veterinary importance - are themselves also significant pests. Tick salivary proteins are the result of adaptation to blood feeding and contain inhibitors of blood clotting, platelet aggregation, and angiogenesis, as well as vasodilators and immunomodulators. A previous analysis of the sialotranscriptome (from the Greek sialo, saliva) of Amblyomma variegatum is revisited in light of recent advances in tick sialomes and provides a database to perform a proteomic study.

Technical Abstract: The clusterized data set has been expertly curated in light of recent reviews on tick salivary proteins, identifying many new families of tick-exclusive proteins. A proteome study using salivary gland homogenates identified 19 putative secreted proteins within a total of 211 matches. The annotated sialome of A. variegatum allows its comparison to other tick sialomes, helping to consolidate an emerging pattern in the salivary composition of metastriate ticks; novel protein families were also identified. Because most of these proteins have no known function, the task of functional analysis of these proteins and the discovery of novel pharmacologically active compounds becomes possible.