Abstract:
Ticks secrete proteins in their saliva that change over the course of feeding to modulate the host
infammation, immune responses, haemostasis or may cause paralysis. RNA next generation
sequencing technologies can reveal the complex dynamics of tick salivary glands as generated from
various tick life stages and/or males and females. The current study represents 15,115 Illumina
sequenced contigs of the salivary gland transcriptome from male and female Rhipicephalus evertsi
evertsi ticks of early, mid and late feeding stages from 1320 separate assemblies using three short
read assemblers. The housekeeping functional class contributed to the majority of the composition
of the transcriptome (80%) but with lower expression (51%), while the secretory protein functional
class represented only 14% of the transcriptome but 46% of the total coverage. Six percent had an
unknown status contributing 3% of the overall expression in the salivary glands. Platelet aggregation
inhibitors, blood clotting inhibitors and immune-modulators orthologous to the ancestral tick lineages
were confrmed in the transcriptome and their diferential expression during feeding in both genders
observed. This transcriptome contributes data of importance to salivary gland biology and blood
feeding physiology of non-model organisms.
