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Tick as a Model for the Study of a Primitive Complement System

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Recent Advances on Model Hosts

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 710))

Abstract

Ticks are blood feeding parasites transmitting a wide variety of pathogens to their vertebrate hosts. The transmitted pathogens apparently evolved efficient mechanisms enabling them to evade or withstand the cellular or humoral immune responses within the tick vector. Despite its importance, our knowledge of tick innate immunity still lags far beyond other well established invertebrate models, such as drosophila, horseshoe crab or mosquitoes. However, the recent release of the American deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, genome and feasibility of functional analysis based on RNA interference (RNAi) facilitate the development of this organism as a full-value model for deeper studies of vector-pathogen interactions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grant P506/110/2136 to P.K. from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, the Research Centre LC06009 and Research projects Z60220518 and MSMT6007665801 from Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Branisovská 31, Ceské Budejovice, CZ-370 05, Czech Republic

    Petr Kopacek, Ondrej Hajdusek & Veronika Buresova

  2. Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), Université Louis Pasteur, 15, rue René Descartes, 67084, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Ondrej Hajdusek

Authors
  1. Petr Kopacek
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  2. Ondrej Hajdusek
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  3. Veronika Buresova
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Petr Kopacek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Fruit Street 55, Boston, 02114-2696, Massachusetts, USA

    Eleftherios Mylonakis

  2. Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Street 185, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Frederick M. Ausubel

  3. Schepens Eye Research Inst., Harvard Medical School, Staniford St. 20, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Michael Gilmore

  4. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dept. Microbiology & Immunology, Yeshiva University, Morris Park Ave. 1300, Bronx, 10461, New York, USA

    Arturo Casadevall

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Kopacek, P., Hajdusek, O., Buresova, V. (2012). Tick as a Model for the Study of a Primitive Complement System. In: Mylonakis, E., Ausubel, F., Gilmore, M., Casadevall, A. (eds) Recent Advances on Model Hosts. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 710. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5638-5_9

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