Cinkovich SS, Lambin EF. Disease risk and landscape attributes of tick-borne Borrelia pathogens in the San Francisco Bay area, California. PLoS ONE. 2015;10:e0134812. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0134812 7. Barbour AG. Phylogeny of a relapsing fever Borrelia species transmitted by the hard tick Ixodes scapularis. Infect Genet Evol. 2014;27:551–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.meegid.20...

A linkage map of the Ixodes scapularis genome was constructed, based upon segregation amongst 127 loci. These included 84 random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers, 32 Sequence-Tagged RAPD (STAR) markers, 5 cDNAs, and 5 microsatellites in 232 F1 intercross progeny from a single, field-collected P1 female. A preliminary linkage map of 616 cM was generated across 14 linkage groups with one ...

a 30-year-old african woman in kenya succumbed to severe swollen regional lymph nodes, development of painful boils and ulcer formation and rashes at specific tick-biting sites together with an intermittent fever and headache following repeated tick bites of rhipicephalus pulchellus. she later developed nuchal lymphadenopathy-like condition and an eschar with edematous margins at bitten sites. ...

Bacterial endosymbionts of ticks are of interest due to their close evolutionary relationships with tick-vectored pathogens. For instance, whereas many ticks contain Francisella-like endosymbionts (FLEs), others transmit the mammalian pathogen Francisella tularensis. We recently sequenced the genome of an FLE present in the hard tick Amblyomma maculatum (FLE-Am) and showed that it likely evolve...

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in the United States. In the United States, the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto (hereafter termed B burgdorferi) is the only pathogen that causes Lyme disease. However, in Europe and Asia, Borrelia afzelii, Borrelia garinii, and other related species, in addition to B burgdorferi, cause Lyme disease. In the United States, these ...

Ixodes persulcatus is a predominant hard tick species that transmits a wide range of human and animal pathogens. Since bacterial flora of the tick dwelling in the wild always vary according to their hosts and the environment, it is highly desirable that species-associated microbiomes are fully determined by using next-generation sequencing and based on comparative metagenomics. Here, we examine...

The presence, internal distribution, and phylogenetic position of endosymbiotic bacteria from four species of specific-pathogen-free ticks were studied. These included the hard ticks Ixodes scapularis (the black-legged tick), Rhipicephalus sanguineus (the brown dog tick), and Haemaphysalis longicornis and the African soft tick Ornithodoros moubata. PCR assays for bacteria, using two sets of gen...

Introduction: Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) is a fatal tick-borne viral zoonosis with a case fatality rate of 5% to 30%. CCHF has been documented as the most frequent tick-borne viral infection in Iran with more than 50 cases annually. Kerman Province in the south of Iran is one of the CCHF-endemic areas of the country, but no data on infection of ticks with this virus from this area i...