Know more

On a global scale, ticks are the ectoparasites that have the greatest economic impact on livestock farming. Due to their strictly haematophagous diet, they have negative consequences on animal health through blood depletion, especially in tropical areas. In addition, ticks transmit many pathogens, including the etiological agents of major tropical diseases for livestock (bovine theileriosis and babesiosis, cowdriosis...) which are widely distributed, especially in overseas departments and regions (New Caledonia, West Indies, Reunion Island...).

In Europe, the impact of tick-borne diseases in cattle is more limited but their importance is reinforced by their zoonotic nature. As livestock are prized by adult ticks (including the most frequent species in Europe, Ixodes ricinus, which also bites humans) for their blood meal, they are therefore important hosts for human vector-borne diseases (notably Lyme disease, the most frequent vector-borne disease in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

So far, tick control has relied mainly on the use of chemical acaricides. These molecules can have negative effects on humans, livestock (toxicosis, behavioural changes) and ecosystems (e.g. on non-target organisms such as coprophagous insects). In addition, resistance to acaricides has already been observed in ticks in different parts of the world. The emergence of resistance in ticks favours the use of higher doses of acaricides and aggravates problems related to the unintended effects of acaricides. There is therefore a need to develop new acaricides that will target ticks very specifically and thus limit their unintended negative effects.

The Xenobio-TICK project is an Institut Carnot France Futur Elevage (ICF2E) project.

The objective of the Xenobio-TICK project is to sequence in depth the transcriptome of ticks in order to identify and characterize new neuroreceptor genes, as divergent as possible from those of insects, which will be used as tick specific targets for the development of new acaricides. After being identified by bioinformatics tools, these new neuroreceptors will be functionally characterized and their sensitivity to certain molecules will be studied. The genetic variability of these receptors will also be estimated in order to estimate the potential durability of the acaricide targeting this receptor. Although high-throughput screening of a large number of molecules is beyond the scope of Xenobio-TICK, this project, by making available functional and expressible neuronal receptors in heterologous systems, will constitute a major step forward in the development of automated screening of molecules targeting these receptors. The project should allow the development of a collaboration with industrial partners for the development of new acaricides with high efficacy and less unintended effects.

Partners: this project, funded by the Carnot Institute's 2016 call for projects "France Futur Elevage", is led by UMR BIOEPAR and started in 2017 for a period of 30 months. Two other units are partners in the project: the UMR ISP (Inra Val de Loire centre) and the USC LBLGC (Laboratoire de Biologie des Ligneux et des Grandes Cultures, Inra Val de Loire centre).

Contacts

Scientific contact:

•  Olivier Plantard UMR BIOEPAR

Associated Department : Santé animale

Associated Centre : Pays de la Loire, Val de Loire