A female tick, engorged with blood after feeding, lays tiny eggs in clusters as large as her body . (Purdue University photo)
Ticks as small as a freckle can transmit a number of illnesses for which there is no vaccine and, in some cases, no cure.
Ticks transmit more pathogens to humans and other animals than any other blood-feeding organism. To find new ways to control the tiny animals and the spread of the diseases they carry, Purdue University researchers and colleagues from the University of Connecticut Health Center, Notre Dame University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are undertaking the job of unraveling the genetic makeup of the deer, or black-legged, tick. Deer ticks are the main vectors for Lyme disease, the most commonly reported tick-transmitted human disease in the United States.
“This will be the first time researchers have explored a tick genome in depth,” says Purdue entomologist Catherine Hill. “It's crucial to learn how ticks spread serious illnesses because of the global health threats these diseases pose.
One of the potential outcomes of this project is development of vaccines to block transmission of microbes that cause tick-borne illnesses, says Hill, who spearheaded efforts to gain National Institutes of Health backing for the venture.
Hill is extracting RNA from ticks at different stages of their lifecycle and from different tissues in the tick. These samples will provide scientists with the first clues as to the types of genes present in ticks and how gene expression changes when ticks are infected with disease-causing microorganisms.
