Tick microbiome: the force within

Abstract

Ticks are obligate blood-feeders and serve as vectors of human and livestock pathogens worldwide. Defining the tick microbiome and deciphering the interactions between the tick and its symbiotic bacteria in the context of tick development and pathogen transmission, will likely reveal new insights and spawn new paradigms to control tick-borne diseases. Descriptive observations on the tick microbiome that began almost a century ago serve as forerunners to the gathering momentum to define the tick microbiome in greater detail. This review will focus on the current efforts to address the microbiomes of diverse ticks, and the evolving understanding of tick microbiomes. There is hope that these efforts will bring a holistic understanding of pathogen transmission by ticks.

Pathogen-mediated manipulation of arthropod microbiota to promote infection

“…Numerous factors including exposure to environmental bacteria, geographic location, tick species, gender, developmental status, and time since molting and feeding, among others, are expected to play an important role in contributing to the microbiome composition in ticks (10,44,45). Therefore, although the tick gutassociated microbes might not be conserved across different regions, with several published reports suggesting a large diversity (46)(47)(48)(49), and others suggesting that inflated diversities are due to environmental contaminants (50), we used multiple criteria (see SI Appendix) to accurately assess the microbial composition of our laboratory-reared and murine host-fed I. scapularis nymphs. Based on our stringencies and exclusion criteria, we observed eight genera including Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, Rickettsia, Lysinibacillus, Corynebacterium, Staphylococcus, Enterococcus, and Delftia that were consistently observed, independent of treatment condition.…”

Tick vaccines: current status and future directions

“…Nevertheless, other possibilities should be considered to explain the effect of the vaccination with Subolesin including the effect of a host cell-mediated immune response and antibody responses that are cross-reactive with other proteins [54, 94,106]. resistance to tick infestation and/or pathogen infection as proposed using transgenic plants [110], glycoconjugate vaccines based on tick protein glycosylation [111] and the manipulation of the tick microbiota to reduce pathogen infection and transmission rates [112]. Finally, cocktails of tick-derived antigens alone or in combination with pathogen-derived antigens should result in more effective vaccines that could be used in combination with other control methods for the integrated control of tick infestations and TBD (FIGURE 1).…”

The ecology of Lyme borreliosis risk : interactions between lxodes ricinus, rodents and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato

“…The relationship between the tick microbiome and tick survival and borreliae transmission are far from understood (Narasimhan and Fikrig 2015) and has not been investigated in I. ricinus.…”