Lyme disease receptor identified in tick guts
...nside ticks. "We identified a receptor inside the tick gut that the spirochete bacteria use to colonize or invade ticks," said principal investigator Erol Fikrig, M.D., professor of internal medicine/rheumatology and in the Section of Microbial Pathogenesis, and Department of Epidemiology and Public Heal...Vaccinating wildlife can reduce human risk for Lyme disease
...ed the risk for humans getting Lyme disease from a tick bite. "Vaccinating wildlife increases our prevention options," said principal investigator Durland Fish, professor of epidemiology at Yale, who led the study with Jean Tsao, now at Michigan State University and microbiologist Alan Barbour at Unive...In wake of Lyme disease vaccine for people, mice may be next in line for shots
... hope to ultimately reduce the number of dangerous tick bites that infect some 23,000 people in 2002 in th...ible for producing many infected nymphs, the young tick stage that presents the greatest health risk for people. Tsao decided to take an experimental...Scientists decipher genome of bacterium that helps clean up major groundwater pollutants
...ly to the understanding of what makes this microbe tick and why it's metabolic diet is so unusual," says TIGR scientist Rekha Seshadri, the primary author of the Science paper. D. ethenogenes, which was discovered by Cornell University scientists at a sewage treatment plant in Ithaca, NY, is the only know...Researchers identify protein crucial for survival of Lyme-disease bacterium
... of blood, it is unable to be transmitted from the tick to a new animal host, researchers at UT Southweste...relia burgdorfei (Bb) to survive in the gut of its tick host and may offer a potential new target for agents aimed at eradicating Lyme disease. Results of ...Scientists reveal how disease bacterium survives inside immune system cell
...nd cows. A. phagocytophilum is carried by the same tick that transmits Lyme disease and was first identified in humans in 1996. Human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA) -- formerly called human granulocytic ehrlichiosis -- is prevalent in Minnesota and along the East Coast. HGA typically causes mild symptoms...Bee mites suppress bee immunity, open door for viruses and bacteria
...ite is a honey bee parasite that feeds much like a tick on the body of a bee. The mites are about the size of a pin head, dark brown in color and visible on close inspection. This bee mite probably arose in the Eastern or Chinese Honey Bee population and hopped over to the United States in 1987. They...For first time, brain cells generated in a dish
... like cancer cells. Knowing what makes these cells tick may help by furthering our knowledge of the biology of the tumor."...Infectious disease expert warns of spread of Rocky Mountain spotted fever
...cks. Four of the patients had a recent history of tick bite. Tests of the dogs' blood confirmed their infection with the spotted fever bacterium. Feral dogs and brown dog ticks are not a species found naturally in the Arizona region, but were introduced to the state as domesticated dogs that moved wit...UTSA researchers awarded $6.4 million to study tularemia
...e. "We are going to learn what makes this organism tick and what strategies it uses to evade immune responses and eventually kill its host," said Klose. While Klose is concentrating on understanding how Franciscella tularensis causes tularemia, UTSA immunologist Bernard Arulanandam hopes to characterize ...Ticks, flukes, and genomics: Emerging pathogens revealed
...outer membrane surface. When the bacteria, through tick bites, transfers to a human, say, or horse, the ba...nce, appear capable of making vitamins that a host tick lacks in its regular diet. "This study is a beautiful example of how in-depth comparative genomics ...Purdue project could help pets serve as disease watchdogs
... A clear pattern of association between flea and tick infestation in pets compared to the incidence of Lyme disease in humans, with a two-month lag and peak rates occurring during warmer months. This information allows veterinarians to anticipate unusual occurrences of diseases that are transmitted from...A new view on Lyme disease: Rodents hold the key to annual risk
...risk of Lyme disease in a given year: abundance of tick hosts--white-footed mice and chipmunks--in the pre...tailed deer population dynamics as determinants of tick abundance and disease risk. But few have investigated the impacts of fluctuations in the abundance o...Biological diversity and human health; Rapid autopsy program; Snake bites and more
... America is transmitted to humans by a blacklegged tick harboring the Lyme bacterium. The ticks feed on ...each with a different probability of infecting the tick with the Lyme bacterium. Over 90% of ticks feeding on white-footed mice become infected compared wi...Deer-free areas may be haven for ticks, disease
... removing deer from the equation could disrupt the tick lifecycle and leave fewer ticks to feed on rodents... show that removing deer sometimes leads to higher tick densities and sometimes lower, and the outcome seems dependent on the size of area from which deer a...Animal testing alternative has ticks trembling at the knees
...oxicity. Researchers use the leg tremblings of the tick (Ioxedes ricinus) to observe the early stages of c... nerve system damage (leg trembling) and measuring tick mortality (Pest Management Science DOI:10.1002/ps.1293). Vicky Robinson, chief executive of the Na...Researchers publish first working model that explains how biological clocks work
...es in Neurospora crassabread moldmake such a clock tick at the molecular level. The paper in PNAS describes how to identify genetic networks and show how the tools of systems biology can yield insights into what makes the clock tick. "Much of what we know about the biological clock comes from the study ...Keeping the body in sync -- the stability of cellular clocks
...sco involving families whose circadian clocks dont tick quite right. These families clocks are shorter than 24 hours, and they also have mutations in oscillator-related genes. The current results shed light on how a genetically-linked phosphorylation event gone wrong could lead to inaccurate timing of our...'Combination' Lyme disease vaccine proteins patented
...deer ticks stomach, and not in the host. After the tick bites a warm-blooded mammalian host, the injected bacteria produce OspC on their surface. With the aim of developing a vaccine that would trigger an immune response against both these life cycle stages, Dunn's team used methods of recombinant DNA t...... that is. The "truly gluttonous" female ixodid tick increases her weight an astounding 100 times her o...s, suggests several differences between the ixodid tick and her blood-sucking counterparts that help explain the weight gain. Using mosquitoes, tsetse flies...