flagelliform silk protein [A. trifasciata] flagelliform silk protein [N.clavipes] flagelliform silk protein [N.clavipes] flagelliform silk protein [N. madagascariensis] flagelliform silk protein [N. madagascariensis] major ampullate spidroin 1 [L. hesperus] major ampullate dragline silk protein-2 [Araneus ventricosus] major ampullate spidroin 2-1 [K. hibernalis] major ampullate spidroin 2-2 [K. hibernalis] fibroin 2 [D. spinosa] gi 89113990 gi 13561980 gi 2833647 651 871 gi 7106224 2.249 54,37 gi 7106228 1.884 gi 7106229 gi 89276817 gi 27228959 gi 47007938 626 623 1.065 429 185 47,31 46,84 51,8 47,12 35,63 41,22 27,03 47,02 Maruyama et al. BMC Genomics 2010, 11:363 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/363 Table 2: Description of matches with glycine-rich proteins present in the Arachnida protein database for transcripts from A. cajennense, R. sanguineus and R. microplus (Continued) Page 5 of 17 1E-017 9E-020 2E-011 8E-010 4E-018 4E-004 7E-012 5E-012 3E-021 7E-011 7E-008 2E-004 6E-011 1E-005 1E-019 3E-009 2E-013 7E-017 9E-008 3E-025 2E-010 1E-014 1E-010 6E-018 1E-022 2E-004 4E-005 SGFRm SGFRs SGFRm SGFRm SGFRm SGFRs SGFRm SGFRm SGFRm SGFRm SGFRm SGFRm SGFRs SGFRm SGFRm SGFAc SGFAc SGFRm SGFRm SGFAc SGFRs SGFRs SGFRs SGFRs SGFRm Rm533 (1) Rs54 (3) Rm35 (1) Rm36 (1) Rm32 (3) Rs130 (1) Rm34 (3) Rm129 (2) Rm33 (2) Rm37 (1) Rm76 (2) Rm197 (1) Rs29 (5) Rm433 (1) Rm324 (1) Ac13 (3) Ac15 (1) Rm381 (1) Rm418 (1) Ac14 (1) Ac17 (1) Ac16 (1) Rs38 (1) Rs37 (3) Rs70 (2) Rs84 (2) Rm185 (1) 30,91 33,14 20,68 22,53 25 21,42 25,54 26,82 27,48 21,64 17,22 25 23,92 23,8 48,38 32,46 35,92 22,97 21 32,33 32,09 31,96 17,35 31,09 31,65 45,23 26,25 gi 47007952 214 49,53 spidroin 1 [N. clavipes] SPD1_NEPCL Spidroin-1 [Dragline silk fibroin 1] gi 2911274 gi 1174414 544 747 40,25 42,3 * Computation of glycine content was calculated based on translated consensus sequence As noted above, the annotation of the three cDNA libraries using the BLAST results permitted us to observe that the libraries and some contigs contained fewer or more transcripts and sequences coding for proteins simi- lar to GRPs than expected from a random distribution, as evaluated with the χ2 or Fisher exact tests. Table 3 pres- ents the distribution of all transcripts coding for the GRPs observed among the three salivary gland libraries from females of the tick species studied herein, R. microplus, R. sanguineus and A. cajennense. SGFRm and SGFRs libraries contain significantly (P = 0.006 and P = 0.003, respectively; χ2 test) more transcripts coding for all types of GRPs than the SGFAc library; transcripts for GRPs were equally represented in the SGFRm and SGFRs libraries (P = 0.821, χ2 test). These results show that for Brevirostrata ticks, R. microplus and R. sanguineus, the