Toward an understanding of the biochemical and pharmacological complexity of the saliva of a hematophagous sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis.

ABSTRACT: The saliva of blood-sucking arthropods contains powerful pharmacologically active substances and may be a vaccine target against some vector-borne diseases. Subtractive cloning combined with biochemical approaches was used to discover activities in the salivary glands of the hematophagous fly Lutzomyia longipalpis. Sequences of nine full-length cDNA clones were obtained, five of which are possibly associated with blood-meal acquisition, each having cDNA similarity to: (i) the bed bug Cimex lectularius apyrase, (ii) a 5'-nucleotidase/phosphodiesterase, (iii) a hyaluronidase, (iv) a protein containing a carbohydrate-recognition domain (CRD), and (v) a RGD-containing peptide with no significant matches to known proteins in the BLAST databases. Following these findings, we observed that the sa

SUBMITTER: Charlab R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC24789 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature