Aedes aegypti salivary gland transcriptome from male and female adult organisms

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are vectors of arboviral diseases such as Yellow Fever and Dengue fever. Only the adult female mosquito feeds on blood, while both genders take sugar meals. Their salivary glands (SG) reflect this sexual dimorphism. Male glands are minuscule compared to their female counterpart, and several compounds associated with blood feeding, such as vasodilatory, anti-clotting and anti-platelet factors are found only in female glands, while enzymes associated with sugar feeding or antimicrobial components such as lysozyme are found in both glands. To further identify salivary specific components of adult Aedes aegypti mosquitoes we performed “de novo” assembly of 285 million reads of an adult female mRNA library from Ae. aegypti with 90 million reads from a male salivary gland library. This work contributes to a near definitive catalog of male and female salivary gland transcripts from Ae. aegypti, which will help to direct further studies aiming at the functional characterization of the many transcripts with unknown function, as well as the role of such products in SG gene expression and viral transmission.