Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection
BACKGROUND: Ticks represent a significant health risk to animals and humans due to the variety of pathogens they can transmit during feeding. The traditional use of chemicals to control ticks has serious drawbacks, including the selection of acaricide-resistant ticks and environmental contamination...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24450836 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-3305-7-42 |
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author | Antunes, Sandra Merino, Octavio Mosqueda, Juan Moreno-Cid, Juan A Bell-Sakyi, Lesley Fragkoudis, Rennos Weisheit, Sabine Pérez de la Lastra, José M Alberdi, Pilar Domingos, Ana de la Fuente, José |
author_facet | Antunes, Sandra Merino, Octavio Mosqueda, Juan Moreno-Cid, Juan A Bell-Sakyi, Lesley Fragkoudis, Rennos Weisheit, Sabine Pérez de la Lastra, José M Alberdi, Pilar Domingos, Ana de la Fuente, José |
author_sort | Antunes, Sandra |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Ticks represent a significant health risk to animals and humans due to the variety of pathogens they can transmit during feeding. The traditional use of chemicals to control ticks has serious drawbacks, including the selection of acaricide-resistant ticks and environmental contamination with chemical residues. Vaccination with the tick midgut antigen BM86 was shown to be a good alternative for cattle tick control. However, results vary considerably between tick species and geographic location. Therefore, new antigens are required for the development of vaccines controlling both tick infestations and pathogen infection/transmission. Tick proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions may provide good candidate protective antigens for these vaccines, but appropriate screening procedures are needed to select the best candidates. METHODS: In this study, we selected proteins involved in tick-Anaplasma (Subolesin and SILK) and tick-Babesia (TROSPA) interactions and used in vitro capillary feeding to characterize their potential as antigens for the control of cattle tick infestations and infection with Anaplasma marginale and Babesia bigemina. Purified rabbit polyclonal antibodies were generated against recombinant SUB, SILK and TROSPA and added to uninfected or infected bovine blood to capillary-feed female Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus ticks. Tick weight, oviposition and pathogen DNA levels were determined in treated and control ticks. RESULTS: The specificity of purified rabbit polyclonal antibodies against tick recombinant proteins was confirmed by Western blot and against native proteins in tick cell lines and tick tissues using immunofluorescence. Capillary-fed ticks ingested antibodies added to the blood meal and the effect of these antibodies on tick weight and oviposition was shown. However, no effect was observed on pathogen DNA levels. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlighted the advantages and some of the disadvantages of in vitro tick capillary feeding for the characterization of candidate tick protective antigens. While an effect on tick weight and oviposition was observed, the effect on pathogen levels was not evident probably due to high tick-to-tick variations among other factors. Nevertheless, these results together with previous results of RNA interference functional studies suggest that these proteins are good candidate vaccine antigens for the control of R. microplus infestations and infection with A. marginale and B. bigemina. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3900739 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39007392014-01-25 Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection Antunes, Sandra Merino, Octavio Mosqueda, Juan Moreno-Cid, Juan A Bell-Sakyi, Lesley Fragkoudis, Rennos Weisheit, Sabine Pérez de la Lastra, José M Alberdi, Pilar Domingos, Ana de la Fuente, José Parasit Vectors Research BACKGROUND: Ticks represent a significant health risk to animals and humans due to the variety of pathogens they can transmit during feeding. The traditional use of chemicals to control ticks has serious drawbacks, including the selection of acaricide-resistant ticks and environmental contamination with chemical residues. Vaccination with the tick midgut antigen BM86 was shown to be a good alternative for cattle tick control. However, results vary considerably between tick species and geographic location. Therefore, new antigens are required for the development of vaccines controlling both tick infestations and pathogen infection/transmission. Tick proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions may provide good candidate protective antigens for these vaccines, but appropriate screening procedures are needed to select the best candidates. METHODS: In this study, we selected proteins involved in tick-Anaplasma (Subolesin and SILK) and tick-Babesia (TROSPA) interactions and used in vitro capillary feeding to characterize their potential as antigens for the control of cattle tick infestations and infection with Anaplasma marginale and Babesia bigemina. Purified rabbit polyclonal antibodies were generated against recombinant SUB, SILK and TROSPA and added to uninfected or infected bovine blood to capillary-feed female Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus ticks. Tick weight, oviposition and pathogen DNA levels were determined in treated and control ticks. RESULTS: The specificity of purified rabbit polyclonal antibodies against tick recombinant proteins was confirmed by Western blot and against native proteins in tick cell lines and tick tissues using immunofluorescence. Capillary-fed ticks ingested antibodies added to the blood meal and the effect of these antibodies on tick weight and oviposition was shown. However, no effect was observed on pathogen DNA levels. CONCLUSIONS: These results highlighted the advantages and some of the disadvantages of in vitro tick capillary feeding for the characterization of candidate tick protective antigens. While an effect on tick weight and oviposition was observed, the effect on pathogen levels was not evident probably due to high tick-to-tick variations among other factors. Nevertheless, these results together with previous results of RNA interference functional studies suggest that these proteins are good candidate vaccine antigens for the control of R. microplus infestations and infection with A. marginale and B. bigemina. BioMed Central 2014-01-22 /pmc/articles/PMC3900739/ /pubmed/24450836 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-3305-7-42 Text en Copyright © 2014 Antunes et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Antunes, Sandra Merino, Octavio Mosqueda, Juan Moreno-Cid, Juan A Bell-Sakyi, Lesley Fragkoudis, Rennos Weisheit, Sabine Pérez de la Lastra, José M Alberdi, Pilar Domingos, Ana de la Fuente, José Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title | Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title_full | Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title_fullStr | Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title_full_unstemmed | Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title_short | Tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
title_sort | tick capillary feeding for the study of proteins involved in tick-pathogen interactions as potential antigens for the control of tick infestation and pathogen infection |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3900739/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24450836 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-3305-7-42 |
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