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Molecular Approaches to Tick Genomics, Tick-Borne Pathogen Surveillance, and Human-Tick Exposure Risk
Molecular Approaches to Tick Genomics, Tick-Borne Pathogen Surveillance, and Human-Tick Exposure Risk
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202105202
- ISBN
- 9798263320348
- DDC
- 613
- 저자명
- Cassens, Jacob.
- 서명/저자
- Molecular Approaches to Tick Genomics, Tick-Borne Pathogen Surveillance, and Human-Tick Exposure Risk
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : University of Minnesota, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 255 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-05, Section: B.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Oliver, Jonathan D.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Minnesota, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약Ticks and tick-borne pathogens pose threats to public health. Tick populations have been expanding their geographic range globally, leading to substantial overlap between ticks, tick-borne pathogens, and human populations. The spread of these pathogens, coupled with the emergence of novel tick-borne pathogens, requires new strategies to monitor their distribution and genetic diversity. Further, their spread necessitates the expansion of surveillance approaches to capture the totality of factors contributing to tick-borne disease spread into human populations. However, current molecular surveillance approaches are limited in their ability to detect multiple pathogens circulating in tick populations, identify putative tick-borne pathogens, and unravel the contribution of tick genetic composition and diversity to variation in vectorial capacity. Thus, there remains an urgent need to couple interdisciplinary strategies spanning molecular biology, epidemiology, and evolutionary genetics to elucidate the compensatory mechanisms driving tick and tick-borne pathogen population dynamics.This thesis describes an integrated approach utilizing novel molecular surveillance methods to extend our understanding of tick-host-pathogen interactions. In Chapter 1, I discuss current approaches to investigating when, where, and how human populations encounter ticks in natural environments. This chapter places particular emphasis on areas that can be improved to more effectively predict and communicate population-specific risks, implement control strategies, and protect human populations. Next, I describe the utility of comparative genomics for elucidating the genetic basis of tick vectorial capacity, highlighting how advances in sequencing technology will help accelerate our understanding of tick genomics, evolution, and transgenic strategies for tick control. Finally, I elaborate on novel next-generation sequencing approaches for agnostic tick-borne pathogen surveillance and the potential to leverage these technologies for unbiased characterization of known, emerging, and putative tick-borne pathogens.In Chapter 2, I provide findings from a study that couples conventional epidemiological surveillance with molecular approaches to model individual-specific risks of encountering infected ticks among occupationally exposed populations. I expand findings from previous work to develop a model that captures heterogeneity in occupational tick exposure with field-derived tick-borne pathogen infection parameters. This study administered questionnaires to outdoor workers that perform their job responsibilities in tick habitats, sampled ticks from these habitats, and used a passive sampling model to estimate outdoor workers predicted probability of encountering infected ticks. Infected tick encounter probabilities were determined for the two most prevalent tick-borne pathogens in the US, Borrelia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. These estimates are subsequently coupled with demographic information from survey responses to elucidate risk factors associated with elevated infected tick encounter probabilities.In the second study, described in Chapter 3, I present results from a whole genome sequencing study that investigates the genomic characteristics of genetically and phenotypically distinct blacklegged tick populations. Across three geographical locations (Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas), I demonstrate how nanopore sequencing can be coupled with advanced bioinformatic techniques to examine the genetic variation that segregates American and Southern blacklegged tick clades. These results are discussed in light of the implications of genomic diversity on phenotypic variation in tick vectorial capacity, and the potential link with variation in tick-borne disease incidence across the US. Further, I show how nanopore sequencing can recover, assemble, and annotate full-length mitochondrial genomes through native genomic sequencing, and expound on the phylogenetic relationships of hard ticks using maximum likelihood inference. Finally, I demonstrate how nanopore sequencing of blacklegged ticks can capture and recover complete endosymbiont genomes present in ticks, and place them in a phylogenetic context using maximum likelihood inference.In the final study, outlined in Chapter 4, I describe the benchmarking of nanopore adaptive sampling for tick-borne pathogen detection in naturally infected blacklegged ticks. This study couples conventional molecular amplification approaches with nanopore adaptive sampling to evaluate the diagnostic capability of nanopore sequencing for rapid, real-time molecular surveillance of tick-borne pathogens. I leveraged natural tick collections from Chapter 2 to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative predictive value, and positive predictive value of nanopore adaptive sampling compared to PCR detection of Borrelia burgdorferi in blacklegged ticks. I demonstrate how bioinformatic post-processing of nanopore adaptive sampling data influences the computation of diagnostic criteria and provide recommendations to improve certain criteria through refined laboratory procedures and computational considerations. Ultimately, these studies provide alternative molecular approaches to investigate tick-host-pathogen interactions for enhanced surveillance of tick-borne pathogens. The findings from these studies demonstrate numerous potential opportunities to augment conventional surveillance with novel molecular techniques, such as nanopore sequencing, by generating robust genomic datasets to improve our understanding of tick and tick-borne pathogen population dynamics. These results emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to deepen our understanding of tick-host-pathogen interactions, which will aid in the development of novel strategies to prevent and mitigate tick-borne pathogen transmission.
- 일반주제명
- Environmental health
- 일반주제명
- Pathology
- 일반주제명
- Evolution & development
- 일반주제명
- Genetics
- 키워드
- Evolution
- 키워드
- Genomics
- 기타저자
- University of Minnesota Environmental Health
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 87-05B.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a613
■1001 ▼aCassens, Jacob.
■24510▼aMolecular Approaches to Tick Genomics, Tick-Borne Pathogen Surveillance, and Human-Tick Exposure Risk
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bUniversity of Minnesota▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a255 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-05, Section: B.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Oliver, Jonathan D.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Minnesota, 2025.
■520 ▼aTicks and tick-borne pathogens pose threats to public health. Tick populations have been expanding their geographic range globally, leading to substantial overlap between ticks, tick-borne pathogens, and human populations. The spread of these pathogens, coupled with the emergence of novel tick-borne pathogens, requires new strategies to monitor their distribution and genetic diversity. Further, their spread necessitates the expansion of surveillance approaches to capture the totality of factors contributing to tick-borne disease spread into human populations. However, current molecular surveillance approaches are limited in their ability to detect multiple pathogens circulating in tick populations, identify putative tick-borne pathogens, and unravel the contribution of tick genetic composition and diversity to variation in vectorial capacity. Thus, there remains an urgent need to couple interdisciplinary strategies spanning molecular biology, epidemiology, and evolutionary genetics to elucidate the compensatory mechanisms driving tick and tick-borne pathogen population dynamics.This thesis describes an integrated approach utilizing novel molecular surveillance methods to extend our understanding of tick-host-pathogen interactions. In Chapter 1, I discuss current approaches to investigating when, where, and how human populations encounter ticks in natural environments. This chapter places particular emphasis on areas that can be improved to more effectively predict and communicate population-specific risks, implement control strategies, and protect human populations. Next, I describe the utility of comparative genomics for elucidating the genetic basis of tick vectorial capacity, highlighting how advances in sequencing technology will help accelerate our understanding of tick genomics, evolution, and transgenic strategies for tick control. Finally, I elaborate on novel next-generation sequencing approaches for agnostic tick-borne pathogen surveillance and the potential to leverage these technologies for unbiased characterization of known, emerging, and putative tick-borne pathogens.In Chapter 2, I provide findings from a study that couples conventional epidemiological surveillance with molecular approaches to model individual-specific risks of encountering infected ticks among occupationally exposed populations. I expand findings from previous work to develop a model that captures heterogeneity in occupational tick exposure with field-derived tick-borne pathogen infection parameters. This study administered questionnaires to outdoor workers that perform their job responsibilities in tick habitats, sampled ticks from these habitats, and used a passive sampling model to estimate outdoor workers predicted probability of encountering infected ticks. Infected tick encounter probabilities were determined for the two most prevalent tick-borne pathogens in the US, Borrelia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. These estimates are subsequently coupled with demographic information from survey responses to elucidate risk factors associated with elevated infected tick encounter probabilities.In the second study, described in Chapter 3, I present results from a whole genome sequencing study that investigates the genomic characteristics of genetically and phenotypically distinct blacklegged tick populations. Across three geographical locations (Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas), I demonstrate how nanopore sequencing can be coupled with advanced bioinformatic techniques to examine the genetic variation that segregates American and Southern blacklegged tick clades. These results are discussed in light of the implications of genomic diversity on phenotypic variation in tick vectorial capacity, and the potential link with variation in tick-borne disease incidence across the US. Further, I show how nanopore sequencing can recover, assemble, and annotate full-length mitochondrial genomes through native genomic sequencing, and expound on the phylogenetic relationships of hard ticks using maximum likelihood inference. Finally, I demonstrate how nanopore sequencing of blacklegged ticks can capture and recover complete endosymbiont genomes present in ticks, and place them in a phylogenetic context using maximum likelihood inference.In the final study, outlined in Chapter 4, I describe the benchmarking of nanopore adaptive sampling for tick-borne pathogen detection in naturally infected blacklegged ticks. This study couples conventional molecular amplification approaches with nanopore adaptive sampling to evaluate the diagnostic capability of nanopore sequencing for rapid, real-time molecular surveillance of tick-borne pathogens. I leveraged natural tick collections from Chapter 2 to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, negative predictive value, and positive predictive value of nanopore adaptive sampling compared to PCR detection of Borrelia burgdorferi in blacklegged ticks. I demonstrate how bioinformatic post-processing of nanopore adaptive sampling data influences the computation of diagnostic criteria and provide recommendations to improve certain criteria through refined laboratory procedures and computational considerations. Ultimately, these studies provide alternative molecular approaches to investigate tick-host-pathogen interactions for enhanced surveillance of tick-borne pathogens. The findings from these studies demonstrate numerous potential opportunities to augment conventional surveillance with novel molecular techniques, such as nanopore sequencing, by generating robust genomic datasets to improve our understanding of tick and tick-borne pathogen population dynamics. These results emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to deepen our understanding of tick-host-pathogen interactions, which will aid in the development of novel strategies to prevent and mitigate tick-borne pathogen transmission.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0130.
■650 4▼aEnvironmental health
■650 4▼aPathology
■650 4▼aEvolution & development
■650 4▼aGenetics
■653 ▼aBorrelia burgdorferi
■653 ▼aEvolution
■653 ▼aGenomics
■653 ▼aIxodes scapularis
■653 ▼aTick-borne pathogens
■690 ▼a0470
■690 ▼a0412
■690 ▼a0369
■690 ▼a0571
■71020▼aUniversity of Minnesota▼bEnvironmental Health.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g87-05B.
■790 ▼a0130
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17359713▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.


