Rhipicephalus appendiculatus Transcriptome or Gene expression

Tick secretory proteins modulate haemostasis, inflammation and immune responses of the host and are attractive recombinant anti-tick vaccine candidates. Yet, many of the proteins have not been characterised due to the limited sequence availability of ticks and other arthropods for homology-based annotation. To address this limitation, we sequenced the salivary glands of Rhipicephalus appendiculatus ticks during feeding. Male and female ticks were collected at different times during feeding (unfed, 2 days-fed and 5 days-fed), salivary glands dissected, and RNA extracted and stabilised in RNAlater (Qiagen). The Illumina Hiseq and Miseq instruments were used to generated sequence reads and the Trinity software package was used for de novo transcriptome assembly. Annotation by blast and putative open reading frame prediction were performed.