Discovery of immune-related genes expressed in hemocytes of the tarantula spider Acanthoscurria gomesiana

The present study reports the identification of immune related transcripts from hemocytes of the spider Acanthoscurria gomesiana by high throughput sequencing of expressed sequence tags (ESTs). To generate ESTs from hemocytes, two cDNA libraries were prepared: one by directional cloning (primary) and the other by the normalization of the first (normalized). A total of 7584 clones were sequenced and the identical ESTs were clustered, resulting in 3723 assembled sequences (AS). At least 20% of these sequences are putative novel genes. The automatic functional annotation of AS based on Gene Ontology revealed several abundant transcripts related to the following functional classes: hemocyanin, lectin, and structural constituents of ribosome and cytoskeleton. From this annotation, 73 transcripts possibly involved in immune response were also identified, suggesting the existence of several molecular processes not previously described for spiders, such as: pathogen recognition, coagulation, complement activation, cell adhesion and intracellular signaling pathway for the activation of cellular defenses.