Effect of feeding and females on male salivary glands

A differential display experiment was done to compare genes expressed in salivary glands from unfed males, males fed in the presence of females and males fed in the absence of females. Possible differential bands were excised, cloned and sequenced. A macroarray study was done on these clones as probes. RNA from the salivary glands of ticks from the three conditions was labelled and hybridized. Two sets of primers were used in the differential display, and these same two were used in the labelling, so there are two platforms, corresponding to what primer pair was used. Two independent RNA isolations were done, Experiment 1 used one, 2 and 3 the other. Experiment 2 used exposure to X-ray film, while 1 and 3 used a phosphorimager plate. Two exposures of the X-ray film were found to give acceptable results, 1 and 5 min. These were averaged in the analysis. Keywords = salivary_gland Keywords = feeding Keywords = male Keywords = female Keywords: other