Abstract
BackgroundSalivary cell secretion (SCS) plays a critical role in blood feeding by medicinal leeches, making them of use for certain medical purposes even today.ResultsWe annotated the Hirudo medicinalis genome and performed RNA-seq on salivary cells isolated from three closely related leech species, H. medicinalis, Hirudo orientalis, and Hirudo verbana. Differential expression analysis verified by proteomics identified salivary cell-specific gene expression, many of which encode previously unknown salivary components. However, the genes encoding known anticoagulants have been found to be expressed not only in salivary cells. The function-related analysis of the unique salivary cell genes enabled an update of the concept of interactions between salivary proteins and components of haemostasis.ConclusionsHere we report a genome draft of Hirudo medicinalis and describe identification of novel salivary proteins and new homologs of genes encoding known anticoagulants in transcriptomes of three medicinal leech species. Our data provide new insights in genetics of blood-feeding lifestyle in leeches.
Highlights
Salivary cell secretion (SCS) plays a critical role in blood feeding by medicinal leeches, making them of use for certain medical purposes even today
In medicinal leeches, which belong to the group of so-called jawed leeches, saliva is secreted by unicellular salivary glands that reside in the anterior part of the body and are interspersed between the muscle fibres that connect the jaws with the body wall
We created a set of three shotgun libraries to perform sequencing by using three different platforms (Supplementary Table 1)
Summary
Salivary cell secretion (SCS) plays a critical role in blood feeding by medicinal leeches, making them of use for certain medical purposes even today. Babenko et al BMC Genomics (2020) 21:331 particular, application of medicinal leeches improves tissue drainage after replantation when the common surgical correction of venous congestion fails or is unfeasible [7]. In these cases, hirudotherapy frequently provides beneficial effects because the leech feeding apparatus has evolved to promote the finely tuned inhibition of haemostasis and blood coagulation [8, 9]. Some SCS components are thought to preserve the blood from rapid degradation after ingestion
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