Construction of a medicinal leech transcriptome database and its application to the identification of leech homologs of neural and innate immune genes

Table 5 Hirudo transcripts identified as putative homologs of immune genes

Groups of Immune Factors	TOTAL TRANSCRIPTS	EMBRYO ONLY	ADULT CNS ONLY	MIXED
PRR pathway proteins	22	1	2	19
Pattern recognition Receptors (PRRs)	12	1	4	7
Antimicrobial response factors (Effectors)	11	0	2	9
Complement system	19	0	4	15
Clotting and fibrinolytic cascades	4	1	2	1
Cytokines	5	0	0	5
Cluster of differentiation related molecules	8	0	1	7
Related to vertebrate adaptive immune system	11	1	2	8
TOTAL	92	4	17	71

Numbers of Hirudo transcripts identified as putative homologs of genes belonging to seven major groups implicated in the innate immune response, plus a group of potential representatives of the adaptive immune response. Most transcripts are assembled from both whole embryo and adult CNS EST clones, with ~3% present exclusively in the embryonic clones and ~18% exclusively in the Adult CNS. Identification of individual transcripts and the corresponding names of their putative homologs can be found in additional file 3.

ISSN: 1471-2164