Maruyama et al. BMC Genomics 2010, 11:363 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/363 Page 10 of 17 Figure 3 Multiple alignment of Glycine-rich proteins of A. cajennense, R. sanguineus and R. microplus ticks. The transcript protein sequences of clades numbered in figure 3 were aligned in the Clustal X program and analyzed with Bioedit software. Clade 1: transcripts from R. microplus that were homologous with flagelliform silk protein of orb-web weaving spiders. Clade 2: transcripts from A. cajennense were homologous with major am- pullate spidroin protein of non-orb-web weaving spiders. Clade 3: transcripts from R. sanguineus and R. microplus that were homologous with an "un- known", cement-like protein from R.. haemaphysaloides. tive form of attachment among the ixodid ticks [3], presenting an intermediate complexity in this process. Finally, this work showed that in metastriate ticks (from the genera Amblyomma, Dermacentor, Rhipicephalus and Haemaphysalis) the GRPs belong to GGY, GYG and metastriate spider-like cement protein families. We therefore excluded analyses of GRPs from Ixodes sp. and Argasidae ticks and selected GRPs from the NR database on NCBI that present similarities with silk-like and cement-like proteins from A. variegatum, A. america-