Abstract
BackgroundTicks are notorious blood-feeding arthropods that can spread a variety of deadly diseases. The salivary gland is an important organ for ticks to feed on blood, and this organ begins to develop rapidly when ixodid ticks suck blood. When these ticks reach a critical weight, the salivary glands stop developing and begin to degenerate. The expression levels of a large number of proteins during the development and degeneration of salivary glands change, which regulate the biological functions of the salivary glands. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, there are only a few reports on the role of molecular motor and TCA cycle-related proteins in the salivary glands of ticks.ResultsWe used iTRAQ quantitative proteomics to study the dynamic changes in salivary gland proteins in female Haemaphysalis longicornis at four feeding stages: unfed, partially fed, semi-engorged and engorged. Using bioinformatics methods to analyze the dynamic changes of a large number of proteins, we found that molecular motor and TCA cycle-related proteins play an important role in the physiological changes of the salivary glands. The results of RNAi experiments showed that when dynein, kinesin, isocitrate dehydrogenase and citrate synthase were knocked down independently, the weight of the engorged female ticks decreased by 63.5%, 54.9%, 42.6% and 48.6%, respectively, and oviposition amounts decreased by 83.1%, 76.0%, 50.8%, and 55.9%, respectively, and the size of type III acini of females salivary glands decreased by 35.6%, 33.3%, 28.9%, and 20.0%, respectively.ConclusionsThe results showed that the expression of different types of proteins change in different characteristics in salivary glands during the unfed to engorged process of female ticks. Corresponding expression changes of these proteins at different developmental stages of female ticks are very important to ensure the orderly development of the organ. By analyzing these changes, some proteins, such as molecular motor and TCA cycle-related proteins, were screened and RNAi carried out. When these mRNAs were knocked down, the female ticks cannot develop normally. The research results provide a new protein target for the control of ticks and tick-borne diseases.
Highlights
Ticks are notorious blood-feeding arthropods that can spread a variety of deadly diseases
Salivary glands are the main organs involved in tick-borne diseases, because saliva contains a large number of pathogens [6, 7]
The Venn diagram shows the overlap of proteins from three biological replicates, a total of 3667 high-confidence unique proteins were in all three experiments (Fig. 2a); 2507 high-confidence proteins were shared among all three experiments (Fig. 2a), accounting for 68.4% of the total proteins
Summary
Ticks are notorious blood-feeding arthropods that can spread a variety of deadly diseases. The salivary gland is an important organ for ticks to feed on blood, and this organ begins to develop rapidly when ixodid ticks suck blood. Ticks are harmful external parasitic arthropods that transmit a variety of pathogenic microorganisms to their hosts while sucking blood. Salivary glands are the main organs involved in tick-borne diseases, because saliva contains a large number of pathogens [6, 7]. When the tick starts to suck blood, the salivary glands begin to develop rapidly, and expressions of a large number of genes are upregulated rapidly. The salivary glands begin to degenerate when the female tick reaches a critical weight [12,13,14,15]. Salivary gland degeneration is caused by the ecdysteroid hormone [16], which is regulated by many proteins [17]
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