Tick saliva contains a complex mixture of peptides and non-peptides that counteract their hosts' hemostasis, immunity, and tissue-repair reactions. Recent transcriptomic studies have revealed over one thousand different transcripts coding for secreted polypeptides in a single tick species. Not only do these gene products belong to many expanded families, such as the lipocalins, metalloproteases, Antigen-5, cystatins, and apyrases, but also families that are found exclusively in ticks, such as the evasins, Isac, DAP36, and many others. Phylogenetic analysis of the deduced protein sequences indicate that the salivary genes exhibit an increased rate of evolution due to a lower evolutionary constraint and/or positive selection, allowing for a large diversity of tick salivary proteins. Thus, for each new tick species that has its salivary transcriptome sequenced and assembled, a formidable task of annotation of these transcripts awaits. Currently, as of November 2019, there are over 287 thousand coding sequences deposited at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) that are derived from tick salivary gland mRNA. Here, from these 287 thousand sequences we identified 45,264 potential secretory proteins which possess a signal peptide and no transmembrane domains on the mature peptide. By using the psiblast tools, position-specific matrices were constructed and assembled into the TickSialoFam (TSF) database. The TSF is a rpsblastable database that can help with the annotation of tick sialotranscriptomes. The TSA database identified 136 tick salivary secreted protein families, as well as 80 families of endosomal-related products, mostly having a protein modification function. As the number of sequences increases, and new annotation details become available, new releases of the TSF database may become available.

蜱唾液含有肽和非肽的复杂混合物，可以抵消宿主的止血、免疫和组织修复反应。最近的转录组学研究揭示了单一蜱种中编码分泌多肽的一千多个不同转录本。这些基因产物不仅属于许多扩展家族，例如脂质运载蛋白、金属蛋白酶、Antigen-5、半胱氨酸蛋白酶抑制剂和腺苷三磷酸双磷酸酶，而且还属于仅在蜱中发现的家族，例如evasins、Isac、DAP36等。推导的蛋白质序列的系统发育分析表明，由于较低的进化限制和/或正选择，唾液基因表现出较高的进化速率，从而允许蜱唾液蛋白的多样性。因此，对于每个对其唾液转录组进行测序和组装的新蜱种来说，对这些转录本进行注释的艰巨任务正在等待着。目前，截至 2019 年 11 月，国家生物技术信息中心 (NCBI) 保藏了超过 28.7 万个来自蜱唾液腺 mRNA 的编码序列。在这里，我们从这 287,000 个序列中鉴定出了 45,264 个潜在的分泌蛋白，它们具有信号肽，并且成熟肽上没有跨膜结构域。通过使用 psiblast 工具，构建了特定位置矩阵并将其组装到 TickSialoFam (TSF) 数据库中。 TSF 是一个可 rpsblastable 数据库，可以帮助注释蜱唾液酸转录组。 TSA数据库鉴定出136个蜱唾液分泌蛋白家族，以及80个内体相关产品家族，大多具有蛋白质修饰功能。 随着序列数量的增加和新注释细节的出现，TSF 数据库的新版本可能会出现。