Moustafa Mohamed Abdallah Mohamed, Mohamed Wessam Mohamed Ahmed, Lau Alice C C, Chatanga Elisha, Qiu Yongjin, Hayashi Naoki, Naguib Doaa, Sato Kozue, Takano Ai, Matsuno Keita, Nonaka Nariaki, Taylor DeMar, Kawabata Hiroki, Nakao Ryo
Laboratory of Parasitology, Department of Disease Control, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0818, Japan.
Department of Animal Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt.
Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2022 Apr 19;20:1979-1992. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.04.020. eCollection 2022.
Research on vector-associated microbiomes has been expanding due to increasing emergence of vector-borne pathogens and awareness of the importance of symbionts in the vector physiology. However, little is known about microbiomes of argasid (or soft-bodied) ticks due to limited access to specimens. We collected four argasid species (, , , and ) from the nests or burrows of their vertebrate hosts. One laboratory-reared argasid species ( was also included. Attempts were then made to isolate and characterize potential symbionts/pathogens using arthropod cell lines. Microbial community structure was distinct for each tick species. was detected as the predominant symbiont in four tick species where dual symbiosis between and or and was observed in and , respectively. Of note, lacked and instead had and Thiotrichales as alternative symbionts. Our study found strong correlation between tick species and life stage. We successfully isolated and characterized potential pathogens of genera and . The results suggest that there is no consistent trend of microbiomes in relation to tick life stage that fit all tick species and that the final interpretation should be related to the balance between environmental bacterial exposure and endosymbiont ecology. Nevertheless, our findings provide insights on the ecology of tick microbiomes and basis for future investigations on the capacity of argasid ticks to carry novel pathogens with public health importance.
由于媒介传播病原体的不断出现以及人们对共生体在媒介生理学中重要性的认识不断提高，对与媒介相关的微生物群落的研究一直在扩展。然而，由于获取标本的机会有限，关于argasid（或软蜱）蜱的微生物群落知之甚少。我们从其脊椎动物宿主的巢穴或洞穴中收集了四种argasid蜱（ 、 、 和 ）。还包括一种实验室饲养的argasid蜱（ ）。然后尝试使用节肢动物细胞系分离和鉴定潜在的共生体/病原体。每种蜱的微生物群落结构都不同。在四种蜱中检测到 是主要的共生体，在 和 中分别观察到 与 或 与 的双重共生。值得注意的是， 缺乏 ，而是有 和硫发菌目作为替代共生体。我们的研究发现蜱的种类与生命阶段之间存在很强的相关性。我们成功分离并鉴定了 和 属的潜在病原体。结果表明，对于所有蜱种而言，微生物群落与蜱生命阶段之间不存在一致的趋势，最终的解释应与环境细菌暴露和内共生体生态学之间的平衡有关。尽管如此，我们的研究结果为蜱微生物群落的生态学提供了见解，并为未来研究argasid蜱携带具有公共卫生重要性的新型病原体的能力奠定了基础。
