Fourteen anti-tick vaccine targets are variably conserved in cattle fever ticks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus causes significant cattle production losses worldwide because it transmits Babesia bovis and B. bigemina, the causative agents of bovine babesiosis. Control of these ticks has primarily relied on treatment of cattle with chemical acaricides, but frequent use, exacerbated by the one-host lifecycle of these ticks, has led to high-level resistance to multiple classes of acaricides. Consequently, new approaches for control, such as anti-tick vaccines, are critically important. Key to this approach is targeting highly conserved antigenic epitopes to reduce the risk of vaccine escape in heterologous tick populations.

Methods

We evaluated amino acid conservation within 14 tick proteins across 167 R. microplus collected from geographica

SUBMITTER: Busch JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12001435 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature