Investigation of Tick Neurobiology toward New Control Measures of Ticks and Tick-borne Pathogens

Overview & Synopsis

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens represent a very serious, ever-increasing problem to both human and animal health. Ticks are second only to mosquitoes as vectors of human diseases and represent the most important arthropods affecting the cattle industry, as more than 80% of the world’s cattle population is affected by tick-borne diseases. Current tick management methods are clearly inadequate and the key factors driving the emergence of tick-borne diseases are poorly defined. There is no doubt that effective tick and tick-borne disease control strategies are currently hampered due our limited understanding of their physiology. Since the beginning of my professional career starting by PhD study, (2002, Slovakia) till my current principal investigator position in France I was fortunate to stay in the same research direction focusing on highly specific field named: ticks molecular neurophysiology. Currently, only few laboratories around the world are capable to study tick neurophysiology, while most of the invertebrate neurophysiologists focus on the model organisms like Drosophila melanogaster or Caenorhabditis elegans. This can be advocated by the complicated ectoparasitic life style of ticks resulting in significant difficulties to establish efficient rearing colonies of these medically important arthropods in the laboratory. On the other hand, tick community focuses studies primarily to tick morphology, taxonomy, behavior, epidemiology or interaction with their hosts or pathogens they transmit. Specifically the goal of their research has been developing treatments to block tick transmission of disease-causing pathogens. However, from the biological point of view, the researchers are beginning to recognize that ticks are organisms endowed with an incredibly unique physiology and behavior, including capabilities not found in any other blood feeding arthropods. My current laboratory (www.neuropatick.com) in UMR-BIPAR (Maisons-Alfort, France) examining the tick neural signaling pathways is placing an attention to different aspect of tick physiology directly linked to the activities of their neural system. Using the highly innovative cutting edge tools we are fortunate to explore this fascinating and burgeoning field, which sheds a completely new light on unique aspects of tick biology. We anticipate that identifying specific components of the tick signaling systems will present key targets for developing novel tick management strategies, and which could be applicable to a broad spectrum of different tick-host pathogen interactions, rather than just unique solutions for each pathogen. My scientific trajectory, including the current research direction, in this highly specific/unique research field are described below via the detailed CV and the most significant past and current projects.