L Paulina Maldonado-Ruiz1, Saraswoti Neupane1, Yoonseong Park1, Ludek Zurek2,3. 1. Department of Entomology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA. 2. Central European Institute of Technology, Center for Zoonoses, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic. zureklu@vfu.cz. 3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mendel University, Brno, Czech Republic. zureklu@vfu.cz.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), an important vector of a wide range of human and animal pathogens, is very common throughout the East and Midwest of the USA. Ticks are known to carry non-pathogenic bacteria that may play a role in their vector competence for pathogens. Several previous studies using the high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies reported the commensal bacteria in a tick midgut as abundant and diverse. In contrast, in our preliminary survey of the field collected adult lone star ticks, we found the number of culturable/viable bacteria very low. METHODS: We aimed to analyze the bacterial community of A. americanum by a parallel culture-dependent and a culture-independent approach applied to individual ticks. RESULTS: We analyzed 94 adult females collected in eastern Kansas and found that 60.8% of ticks had no culturable bacteria and the remaining ticks carried only 67.7 ± 42.8 colony-forming units (CFUs)/tick representing 26 genera. HTS of the 16S rRNA gene resulted in a total of 32 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with the dominant endosymbiotic genera Coxiella and Rickettsia (> 95%). Remaining OTUs with very low abundance were typical soil bacterial taxa indicating their environmental origin. CONCLUSIONS: No correlation was found between the CFU abundance and the relative abundance from the culture-independent approach. This suggests that many culturable taxa detected by HTS but not by culture-dependent method were not viable or were not in their culturable state. Overall, our HTS results show that the midgut bacterial community of A. americanum is very poor without a core microbiome and the majority of bacteria are endosymbiotic.
BACKGROUND: The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), an important vector of a wide range of human and animal pathogens, is very common throughout the East and Midwest of the USA. Ticks are known to carry non-pathogenic bacteria that may play a role in their vector competence for pathogens. Several previous studies using the high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies reported the commensal bacteria in a tick midgut as abundant and diverse. In contrast, in our preliminary survey of the field collected adult lone star ticks, we found the number of culturable/viable bacteria very low. METHODS: We aimed to analyze the bacterial community of A. americanum by a parallel culture-dependent and a culture-independent approach applied to individual ticks. RESULTS: We analyzed 94 adult females collected in eastern Kansas and found that 60.8% of ticks had no culturable bacteria and the remaining ticks carried only 67.7 ± 42.8 colony-forming units (CFUs)/tick representing 26 genera. HTS of the 16S rRNA gene resulted in a total of 32 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with the dominant endosymbiotic genera Coxiella and Rickettsia (> 95%). Remaining OTUs with very low abundance were typical soil bacterial taxa indicating their environmental origin. CONCLUSIONS: No correlation was found between the CFU abundance and the relative abundance from the culture-independent approach. This suggests that many culturable taxa detected by HTS but not by culture-dependent method were not viable or were not in their culturable state. Overall, our HTS results show that the midgut bacterial community of A. americanum is very poor without a core microbiome and the majority of bacteria are endosymbiotic.
Entities:
Keywords:
Bacterial diversity; Culturing; High throughput sequencing; Microbiome; Midgut
Authors: Tonya R Mixson; Scott R Campbell; James S Gill; Howard S Ginsberg; Mason V Reichard; Terry L Schulze; Gregory A Dasch Journal: J Med Entomol Date: 2006-11 Impact factor: 2.278
Authors: Katherine A Sayler; Amanda D Loftis; Sarah K Beatty; Carisa L Boyce; Elina Garrison; Bambi Clemons; Mark Cunningham; Arthur R Alleman; Anthony F Barbet Journal: J Med Entomol Date: 2016-04-26 Impact factor: 2.278
Authors: Rafal Tokarz; Stephen Sameroff; Teresa Tagliafierro; Komal Jain; Simon H Williams; D Moses Cucura; Ilia Rochlin; Javier Monzon; Giovanna Carpi; Danielle Tufts; Maria Diuk-Wasser; Jory Brinkerhoff; W Ian Lipkin Journal: mSphere Date: 2018-03-07 Impact factor: 4.389
Authors: José de la Fuente; Sandra Antunes; Sarah Bonnet; Alejandro Cabezas-Cruz; Ana G Domingos; Agustín Estrada-Peña; Nicholas Johnson; Katherine M Kocan; Karen L Mansfield; Ard M Nijhof; Anna Papa; Nataliia Rudenko; Margarita Villar; Pilar Alberdi; Alessandra Torina; Nieves Ayllón; Marie Vancova; Maryna Golovchenko; Libor Grubhoffer; Santo Caracappa; Anthony R Fooks; Christian Gortazar; Ryan O M Rego Journal: Front Cell Infect Microbiol Date: 2017-04-07 Impact factor: 5.293
Authors: Melina Garcia Guizzo; Lucas Tirloni; Sergio A Gonzalez; Marisa D Farber; Glória Braz; Luís Fernando Parizi; Lucas Andre Dedavid E Silva; Itabajara da Silva Vaz; Pedro L Oliveira Journal: Front Microbiol Date: 2022-05-03 Impact factor: 5.640
Authors: Juan D Carvajal-Agudelo; Héctor E Ramírez-Chaves; Paula A Ossa-López; Fredy A Rivera-Páez Journal: Exp Appl Acarol Date: 2022-07-13 Impact factor: 2.380