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Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens pose a significant threat to the health and welfare of humans and animals. Our knowledge about pathogens carried by ticks of Australian wildlife is limited. This study aimed to characterise ticks and tick-borne microorganisms from a range of wildlife species across six...

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Autores principales: Ghafar, Abdul, Davies, Nick, Tadepalli, Mythili, Breidahl, Amanda, Death, Clare, Haros, Philip, Li, Yuting, Dann, Peter, Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro, Moutailler, Sara, Foucault-Simonin, Angélique, Gauci, Charles G., Stenos, John, Hufschmid, Jasmin, Jabbar, Abdul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9967841/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36839425
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens12020153
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author Ghafar, Abdul
Davies, Nick
Tadepalli, Mythili
Breidahl, Amanda
Death, Clare
Haros, Philip
Li, Yuting
Dann, Peter
Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro
Moutailler, Sara
Foucault-Simonin, Angélique
Gauci, Charles G.
Stenos, John
Hufschmid, Jasmin
Jabbar, Abdul
author_facet Ghafar, Abdul
Davies, Nick
Tadepalli, Mythili
Breidahl, Amanda
Death, Clare
Haros, Philip
Li, Yuting
Dann, Peter
Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro
Moutailler, Sara
Foucault-Simonin, Angélique
Gauci, Charles G.
Stenos, John
Hufschmid, Jasmin
Jabbar, Abdul
author_sort Ghafar, Abdul
collection PubMed
description Ticks and tick-borne pathogens pose a significant threat to the health and welfare of humans and animals. Our knowledge about pathogens carried by ticks of Australian wildlife is limited. This study aimed to characterise ticks and tick-borne microorganisms from a range of wildlife species across six sites in Victoria, Australia. Following morphological and molecular characterisation (targeting 16S rRNA and cytochrome c oxidase I), tick DNA extracts (n = 140) were subjected to microfluidic real-time PCR-based screening for the detection of microorganisms and Rickettsia-specific real-time qPCRs. Five species of ixodid ticks were identified, including Aponomma auruginans, Ixodes (I.) antechini, I. kohlsi, I. tasmani and I. trichosuri. Phylogenetic analyses of 16S rRNA sequences of I. tasmani revealed two subclades, indicating a potential cryptic species. The microfluidic real-time PCR detected seven different microorganisms as a single (in 13/45 ticks) or multiple infections (27/45). The most common microorganisms detected were Apicomplexa (84.4%, 38/45) followed by Rickettsia sp. (55.6%, 25/45), Theileria sp. (22.2% 10/45), Bartonella sp. (17.8%, 8/45), Coxiella-like sp. (6.7%, 3/45), Hepatozoon sp. (2.2%, 1/45), and Ehrlichia sp. (2.2%, 1/45). Phylogenetic analyses of four Rickettsia loci showed that the Rickettsia isolates detected herein potentially belonged to a novel species of Rickettsia. This study demonstrated that ticks of Australian wildlife carry a diverse array of microorganisms. Given the direct and indirect human–wildlife–livestock interactions, there is a need to adopt a One Health approach for continuous surveillance of tick-associated pathogens/microorganisms to minimise the associated threats to animal and human health.
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spelling pubmed-99678412023-02-27 Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife Ghafar, Abdul Davies, Nick Tadepalli, Mythili Breidahl, Amanda Death, Clare Haros, Philip Li, Yuting Dann, Peter Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro Moutailler, Sara Foucault-Simonin, Angélique Gauci, Charles G. Stenos, John Hufschmid, Jasmin Jabbar, Abdul Pathogens Article Ticks and tick-borne pathogens pose a significant threat to the health and welfare of humans and animals. Our knowledge about pathogens carried by ticks of Australian wildlife is limited. This study aimed to characterise ticks and tick-borne microorganisms from a range of wildlife species across six sites in Victoria, Australia. Following morphological and molecular characterisation (targeting 16S rRNA and cytochrome c oxidase I), tick DNA extracts (n = 140) were subjected to microfluidic real-time PCR-based screening for the detection of microorganisms and Rickettsia-specific real-time qPCRs. Five species of ixodid ticks were identified, including Aponomma auruginans, Ixodes (I.) antechini, I. kohlsi, I. tasmani and I. trichosuri. Phylogenetic analyses of 16S rRNA sequences of I. tasmani revealed two subclades, indicating a potential cryptic species. The microfluidic real-time PCR detected seven different microorganisms as a single (in 13/45 ticks) or multiple infections (27/45). The most common microorganisms detected were Apicomplexa (84.4%, 38/45) followed by Rickettsia sp. (55.6%, 25/45), Theileria sp. (22.2% 10/45), Bartonella sp. (17.8%, 8/45), Coxiella-like sp. (6.7%, 3/45), Hepatozoon sp. (2.2%, 1/45), and Ehrlichia sp. (2.2%, 1/45). Phylogenetic analyses of four Rickettsia loci showed that the Rickettsia isolates detected herein potentially belonged to a novel species of Rickettsia. This study demonstrated that ticks of Australian wildlife carry a diverse array of microorganisms. Given the direct and indirect human–wildlife–livestock interactions, there is a need to adopt a One Health approach for continuous surveillance of tick-associated pathogens/microorganisms to minimise the associated threats to animal and human health. MDPI 2023-01-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9967841/ /pubmed/36839425 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens12020153 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ghafar, Abdul
Davies, Nick
Tadepalli, Mythili
Breidahl, Amanda
Death, Clare
Haros, Philip
Li, Yuting
Dann, Peter
Cabezas-Cruz, Alejandro
Moutailler, Sara
Foucault-Simonin, Angélique
Gauci, Charles G.
Stenos, John
Hufschmid, Jasmin
Jabbar, Abdul
Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title_full Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title_fullStr Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title_full_unstemmed Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title_short Unravelling the Diversity of Microorganisms in Ticks from Australian Wildlife
title_sort unravelling the diversity of microorganisms in ticks from australian wildlife
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9967841/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36839425
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pathogens12020153
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