Fig. 1. (A) Alignment of related peptides, group 1 (Table 3) deduced from an Ixodes scapularis salivary gland cDNA library. Gray background, predicted signal secretory peptide as indicated by the SignalP program. Cysteine residues are shown white over a black background. Other conserved amino acid residues are shown in bold over a gray background. Asterisks, colons or stops below the sequences indicate identity, high conservation and conservation of the amino acids, respectively. (B) Unrooted cladogram indicating the three families HDC, ETC and HNC, named for their mature peptide amino-terminal sequence. The bar represents the degree of divergence among sequences.