Transcriptomes of Chagas disease vectors

Chagas disease is one of the main parasitic diseases found in Latin America infecting an estimated seven to eight million people worldwide. The protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, its etiological agent, uses triatomines as a disease vector, among them the genus Rhodnius. This genus includes species that have been difficult to differentiate because they show low amounts of morphological differentiation. Despite that, there are currently 19 known species described, one of them Rhodnius montenegrensis, which has been confounded with Rhodnius robustus. In order to investigate genetic differences between these two species, we generated large-scale RNA-sequencing data (consisting of four RNA-seq libraries) from the heads and salivary glands of males of R. montenegrensis and R. robustus.