Transcriptome analysis of the salivary glands of the female tick Amblyomma americanum (Acari: Ixodidae)

Ticks infest a wide range of hosts while bypassing their immune, inflammatory and haemostatic responses during their extended feeding, which may last for more than two weeks. Here, we present a transcriptome analysis of 3868 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from three cDNA libraries generated from the salivary glands of adult female Ambyomma americanum ticks at different stages of feeding. We applied a normalization step for one library, significantly decreasing the abundance of mitochondrial sequences amongst the 2292 sequences from the normalized library. Our ESTs include homologues that may modulate haemostatic, immune and inflammatory responses of the hosts. Other ESTs probably represent important components of the highly efficient secretory pathways for salivary proteins and concomitantly transmitted pathogens.