title: Tick as a model for the study of a primitive complement system.
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.
authors: Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Branisovská 31, Ceské Budejovice, CZ-370 05, Czech Republic. kopajz@paru.cas.cz
authors: Petr
authors: P
authors: Kopacek
authors: Ondrej
authors: O
authors: Hajdusek
authors: Veronika
authors: V
authors: Buresova
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D003165:Complement System Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D007113:Immunity, Innate / Q000276:immunology; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology*; D007303:Insect Vectors / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology; D018884:Ixodes / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology* / Q000382:microbiology; D037102:Lectins / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010587:Phagocytosis; D034622:RNA Interference; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D019476:Insect Proteins; D037102:Lectins; D003165:Complement System Proteins