BACKGROUND: Ixodes ricinus is the main tick vector of the microbes that cause Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis in Europe. Pathogens transmitted by ticks have to overcome innate immunity barriers present in tick tissues, including midgut, salivary glands epithelia and the hemocoel. Molecularly, invertebrate immunity is initiated when pathogen recognition molecules trigger serum or cellular signalling cascades leading to the production of antimicrobials, pathogen opsonization and phagocytosis. We presently aimed at identifying hemocyte transcripts from semi-engorged female I. ricinus ticks by mass sequencing a hemocyte cDNA library and annotating immune-related transcripts based on their hemocyte abundance as well as their ubiquitous distribution. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: De novo assembly of 926,596 pyrosequence reads plus 49,328,982 Illumina reads (148 nt length) from a hemocyte library, together with over 189 million Illumina reads from salivary gland and midgut libraries, generated 15,716 extracted coding sequences (CDS); these are displayed in an annotated hyperlinked spreadsheet format. Read mapping allowed the identification and annotation of tissue-enriched transcripts. A total of 327 transcripts were found significantly over expressed in the hemocyte libraries, including those coding for scavenger receptors, antimicrobial peptides, pathogen recognition proteins, proteases and protease inhibitors. Vitellogenin and lipid metabolism transcription enrichment suggests fat body components. We additionally annotated ubiquitously distributed transcripts associated with immune function, including immune-associated signal transduction proteins and transcription factors, including the STAT transcription factor. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This is the first systems biology approach to describe the genes expressed in the haemocytes of this neglected disease vector. A total of 2,860 coding sequences were deposited to GenBank, increasing to 27,547 the number so far deposited by our previous transcriptome studies that serves as a discovery platform for studies with I. ricinus biochemistry and physiology.

Department of Microbiology and Immunology University of Maryland School of Medicine Baltimore Maryland United States of America

Institute of Parasitology Biology Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences Budweis Czech Republic

Vector Biology Section Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases National Institutes of Health Rockville Maryland United States of America

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PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2015 Jul 17;9(7):e0003909. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0003909. PubMed

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Activation of the tick Toll pathway to control infection of Ixodes ricinus by the apicomplexan parasite Babesia microti

The immune factors involved in the rapid clearance of bacteria from the midgut of the tick Ixodes ricinus

Serpins in Tick Physiology and Tick-Host Interaction

Tick Immune System: What Is Known, the Interconnections, the Gaps, and the Challenges

Catalogue of stage-specific transcripts in Ixodes ricinus and their potential functions during the tick life-cycle

In silico target network analysis of de novo-discovered, tick saliva-specific microRNAs reveals important combinatorial effects in their interference with vertebrate host physiology

Protease Inhibitors in Tick Saliva: The Role of Serpins and Cystatins in Tick-host-Pathogen Interaction

Sialomes and Mialomes: A Systems-Biology View of Tick Tissues and Tick-Host Interactions

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BioProject
PRJNA183509

GENBANK
GBIH01000000

SRA
SRR641298, SRR641303, SRR641305, SRR641306, SRR641307, SRR641308, SRR641309, SRR641327, SRR641328, SRR641329, SRR641330, SRR641331