Abstract
Chagas disease is one of the main parasitic diseases found in Latin America and it is estimated that between six and seven million people are infected worldwide. Its etiologic agent, the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is transmitted by triatomines, some of which from the genus Rhodnius. Twenty species are currently recognized in this genus, including some closely related species with low levels of morphological differentiation, such as Rhodnius montenegrensis and Rhodnius robustus. In order to investigate genetic differences between these two species, we generated large-scale RNA-sequencing data (consisting of four RNA-seq libraries) from the heads and salivary glands of males of R. montenegrensis and R. robustus. Transcriptome assemblies produced for each species resulted in 64,952 contigs for R. montenegrensis and 70,894 contigs for R. robustus, with N50 of approximately 2,100 for both species. SNP calling based on the more complete R. robustus assembly revealed 3,055 fixed interspecific differences and 216 transcripts with high levels of divergence which contained only fixed differences between the two species. A gene ontology enrichment analysis revealed that these highly differentiated transcripts were enriched for eight GO terms related to AP-2 adaptor complex, as well as other interesting genes that could be involved in their differentiation. The results show that R. montenegrensis and R. robustus have a substantial quantity of fixed interspecific polymorphisms, which suggests a high degree of genetic divergence between the two species and likely corroborates the species status of R. montenegrensis.
Highlights
Chagas disease is a parasitic infection distributed through the Neotropical region
BUSCO showed that these assemblies had more than 80% (1,320 complete single-copy orthologs of 2,675 total BUSCO groups searched in R. montenegrensis and 1,281 of 2,675 in R. robustus) of complete Arthropods single copy orthologs, which is consistent with what was expected for transcriptomes (S1 Fig)
The study on head tissues transcriptomes from R. montenegrensis and R. robustus generated thousands of interesting genes that shed some light in the evolution and divergence of these species, as well as helped establish potential targets for Triatominae in general, as these data can be combined with previous transcriptomes available for species in this subfamily
Summary
Chagas disease is a parasitic infection distributed through the Neotropical region. Its etiologic agent is the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. Rhodnius montenegrensis X Rhodnius robustus (http://www.capes.gov.br/bolsas/bolsas-nopais/ proex) awarded to Programa de Pos Graduacão em Biociências e Biotecnologia Aplicadas a Farmacia da Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas, UNESP Araraquara; by Programa de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientıfico da Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas - UNESP Araraquara (PADC); by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientıfico e Tecnologico (http://cnpq.br/), research grants 150626/2012-6 (SC-E) and 160002/2013-3 (CC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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