Stephen Wikel is co-principal investigator on the project, which is funded by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"The tick genome project will extend our search for molecules that are essential for ticks to feed and transmit pathogens," said Wikel, director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
The collaborators will delve into how ticks find animals to feed on, feeding methods, blood meal digestion, development of disease-causing microbes within the tick, tick reproduction, transmission of infectious agents, new control methods and evolutionary biology.
Bruce Birren and his team at The Broad Institute at MIT will do the initial sequencing of the deer tick genome. The sequence data will be used to identify tick genes. When this step is complete, the multi-institutional research team and other scientists throughout the world will use the genome data to search for ways to halt tick-borne illnesses.
An invertebrate creature known as an arthropod, ticks transmit, or vector, more pathogens to humans and other animals than any other blood-feeding organism. Indeed, experts now believe one tick type in the United States transmits West Nile virus, previously believed to be only mosquito-borne in this country.
Hill and her colleagues selected the deer tick, scientifically known as Ixodes scapularis, in part because of its large impact on human and animal health.
Deer ticks are the main vectors for Lyme disease, which is the most commonly reported tick-transmitted human disease in the United States. Lyme disease can cause lethargy, joint swelling and facial paralysis. Some of the symptoms can become chronic arthritis and neurological syndromes. In 2002 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded approximately 24,000 cases of the often-misdiagnosed and under-diagnosed illness
'"/>
Contact: Susan A. Steeves
ssteeves@purdue.edu
765-496-7481
Purdue University
2-Sep-2004