Diversity and selective pressures of anticoagulants in three medicinal leeches (Hirudinida: Hirudinidae, Macrobdellidae).

ABSTRACT: Although medicinal leeches have long been used as treatment for various ailments because of their potent anticoagulation factors, neither the full diversity of salivary components that inhibit coagulation, nor the evolutionary selection acting on them has been thoroughly investigated. Here, we constructed expressed sequence tag libraries from salivary glands of two species of medicinal hirudinoid leeches, Hirudo verbana and Aliolimnatis fenestrata, and identified anticoagulant-orthologs through BLASTx searches. The data set then was augmented by the addition of a previously constructed EST library from the macrobdelloid leech Macrobdella decora. The identified orthologs then were compared and contrasted with well-characterized anticoagulants from a variety of leeches with different feeding

SUBMITTER: Kvist S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3631404 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature