EST sequencing of blood-fed and Leishmania-infected midgut of Lutzomyia longipalpis, the principal visceral leishmaniasis vector in the Americas

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is an important worldwide public health problem. Visceral leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania infantum chagasi is mainly transmitted by Lutzomyia longipalpis in the Americas. Leishmania development within the sand fly vector is mostly restricted to the midgut. Thus, a comparative analysis of blood-fed versus infected midguts may provide an invaluable insight into various aspects of sand fly immunity, physiology of blood digestion, and, more importantly, of Leishmania development. To that end, we have engaged in a study to identify expressed sequenced tags (ESTs) from L. longipalpis cDNA libraries produced from midguts dissected at different times post blood meal and also after artificial infection with L. i. chagasi. A total of 2,520 ESTs were obtained and, according to the quality of the sequencing data obtained, assembled into 378 clusters and 1,526 individual sequences or singletons totalizing 1,904 sequences. Several sequences associated with defense, apoptosis, RNAi, and digestion processes were annotated. The data presented here increases current knowledge on the New World sand fly transcriptome, contributing to the understanding of various aspects of the molecular physiology of L. longipalpis, and mechanisms underlying the relationship of this sand fly species with L. i. chagasi.

Development of Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum chagasi in Its Natural Sandfly Vector Lutzomyia longipalpis

“…longipalpis, trypsin-like proteins were identified that displaying high sequence similarities to those from P. papatasi. [40][41][42] Also, mutants lacking lipophosphoglycan were more susceptible to digestion by enzymes. 10 Our data consistently showed high parasite mortality at the early stages of L. infantum chagasi infection, which is probably caused by enzymatic activity.…”

Caspar-like Gene Depletion Reduces Leishmania Infection in Sand Fly Host Lutzomyia longipalpis

“…Very little is known about the signaling cascades initiated after exposure to MAMPs in these sand flies, but the collection of putative immune genes described so far (26,(32)(33)(34) suggests that Lutzomyia is similar to Anopheles in the way it is regulating NF-B activation of signaling cascades. We identified one sequence in the L. longipalpis cDNA libraries (26) that was similar to the Drosophila Caspar gene sharing higher similarity to the A. gambiae Caspar sequence.…”

Circadian rhythms in insect disease vectors

“…But although several transcriptome studies have identified many new sandfly molecules ( Anderson et al 2006 , Dillon et al 2006 , Jochim et al 2008 , Oliveira et al 2009 , Pitaluga et al 2009 , Azevedo et al 2012 ), the lack of the full sequence genome of this vector has hindered further advances in the molecular details of its circadian clock. As the current Lu.…”