The five-year undertaking offers a sign that CRISPR/Cas9 could help prevent tick-borne diseases one day.
is the first to tinker with the DNA of black-legged ticks, better known as deer ticks, and successfully hatch a mutated larval brood from their eggs. The researchers targeted genes that aid in the development of the the animal’s mouthparts and armor.
CRISPR/Cas9 is an up-and-coming genetic editing tool that can be widely applied to organisms to permanently alter the inherited traits in their progeny. But a suite of technical challenges hampers its use in ticks. While “ticks are pretty tough,” says study author Andrew Nuss, an arthropod biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, their eggs are simultaneously fragile and hardy.
Female deer ticks coat their eggs with a special waxy layer to help them survive the seasons. But this protection also makes them difficult for biologists to handle.As proof of concept, the researchers deleted two standard genes in the next generation of ticks that control the development of the animals’ mouthparts and rigid outer cuticle.
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