{"id":71363,"date":"2002-04-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-04-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/tick-saliva-genes-key-to-lyme-disease-vaccine\/"},"modified":"2002-04-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-04-08T00:00:00","slug":"tick-saliva-genes-key-to-lyme-disease-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2002\/04\/tick-saliva-genes-key-to-lyme-disease-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"Tick saliva genes key to Lyme disease vaccine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t溏心vlog免费B站 researchers receive $2.3 million NIH grant
\nto identify useful molecules
\n
\nKINGSTON, R.I. — April 8, 2002 — When a deer tick bites a human or other mammalian host, it takes more than 24 hours before the Lyme disease bacterium travels from the tick\u2019s gut to the tick\u2019s salivary glands and then into the host. During that time, bioactive proteins in the tick\u2019s saliva begin to suppress the mammal\u2019s pain response, increase blood flow to the area, and prevent clotting while at the same time battling the mammal\u2019s immune system response to the biting arthropod. <\/p>\n

\tTwo 溏心vlog免费B站 researchers believe that the proteins in the tick\u2019s saliva may be the key to developing a new vaccine for preventing Lyme disease and other tick-transmitted infections by protecting hosts against blood-feeding ticks. The National Institutes of Health recently awarded them $2.3 million to screen for the most promising tick salivary genes over the next five years. <\/p>\n

\t溏心vlog免费B站 entomology Professor Thomas Mather and microbiology Professor David Nelson, director and associate director, respectively, of the 溏心vlog免费B站 Center for Vector Borne Disease, discovered the importance of tick saliva as a result of NIH-funded research in the late 1990s. The new grant will help them pinpoint the genes and proteins that can best be developed into a vaccine. <\/p>\n

\t“Ticks have more than 400 proteins in their saliva, many of which have evolved to help them steal blood from a host animal by inactivating specific factors of the immune system,” explained Mather. “We\u2019re attempting to identify, purify, and learn the function of these various proteins, because by disrupting their function we may be able to prevent ticks from feeding and transmitting disease-causing microbes.” <\/p>\n

\tSince they began studying the properties of tick saliva in 1994, Mather and Nelson, along with collaborators at NIH, have already identified a significant number of genes that appear promising. More recently their work has focused on developing a system for rapidly screening additional gene candidates for those that might be effective antigens. Mather\u2019s research team makes ticks drool into capillary tubes by administering a muscle relaxant to the ticks. A precious commodity, the team has collected more tick saliva than any other researchers in the world. <\/p>\n

“That saliva has become a real treasure chest of potent molecules for us,” Mather said. “It\u2019s now just a matter of sorting them out, which to me is very exciting.” <\/p>\n

\tWhile Mather focuses on the proteins in the tick saliva, Nelson is studying the Lyme disease bacterium itself. <\/p>\n

\t“When the bacterium is in the tick\u2019s saliva \u2013 on its way from the tick\u2019s gut to the mammal host\u2019s blood \u2013 it\u2019s in a starvation mode because there aren\u2019t enough nutrients in the tick\u2019s saliva for it to grow,” said Nelson. “We think we\u2019ll be able to find a good vaccine candidate among the genes expressed in the bacterium\u2019s physiological response to starvation.”
\n\tAccording to Nelson, the Lyme disease bacterium has about 1,000 genes, but he already knows that some aren\u2019t good candidates for a vaccine. “To screen all of them isn\u2019t a trivial task. But we can predict which should be screened, so we\u2019ll probably only need to look at between 75 and 150.” <\/p>\n

\tOnce Mather and Nelson identify the best vaccine candidates \u2013 either in the tick saliva or in the Lyme disease bacterium \u2013 they anticipate a pharmaceutical company will complete the process of developing it into a vaccine. <\/p>\n

For Information: Thomas Mather 401-874-5616, David Nelson 401-874-5902, Todd McLeish 401-874-7892\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

溏心vlog免费B站 researchers receive $2.3 million NIH grant to identify useful molecules KINGSTON, R.I. — April 8, 2002 — When a deer tick bites a human or other mammalian host, it takes more than 24 hours before the Lyme disease bacterium travels from the tick\u2019s gut to the tick\u2019s salivary glands and then into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}