Stopping Infection at the Source: A Breakthrough in Tick-Borne Disease Research
The bacteria that cause Lyme disease and anaplasmosis cannot produce cholesterol on their own, so they obtain it from the tick's body. Scientists at Washington State University have discovered that by preventing them from accessing this nutrient, their growth can be inhibited before they infect humans.
Instead of searching for more effective ways to treat Lyme disease in humans, scientists from Washington State University decided to go back a step earlier—to the moment before the bacteria even enters the human body. Their idea? To stop the pathogens from developing within the tick's body.
Their research results were published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It turns out that the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi) and anaplasmosis (Anaplasma phagocytophilum) require cholesterol to survive—but cannot produce it themselves. Therefore, they exploit the tick's cellular mechanisms to obtain this nutrient.
The key turned out to be a protein called ATF6, which triggers a response to stress and infection in the tick's body. The research team observed that the bacteria can cleverly manipulate this protein to increase the production of stomatin—another protein responsible for transporting cholesterol within the cell. More stomatin means more cholesterol—which means better conditions for bacterial proliferation. The bacteria deliberately modulate ATF6 to force the tick to overproduce stomatin, thereby increasing cholesterol availability and redirecting it to their needs.
The most important discovery? If stomatin production is blocked, bacterial growth is significantly inhibited. This means it would be possible to develop a therapy that prevents pathogens from surviving in the tick—before it can bite a human.
As the study's lead author, Kaylee Vosbigian, emphasized:
"Most research to date has focused on how bacteria affect humans and animals, rather than how they survive and spread within ticks. What we've discovered could open the door to combating these pathogens in ticks before they become a threat to humans."
This means a completely new direction of research into tick-borne diseases – focused not on the victim of infection, but on the vector itself.
As part of the project, researchers also created a new bioinformatics tool called ArthroQuest . This free platform allows the analysis of the genomes of parasitic arthropods—not only ticks but also mosquitoes, lice, mites, and fleas—for binding to transcription factors such as ATF6.
To date, most such tools have been tailored to humans or fruit flies—model organisms in genetic research. ArthroQuest facilitates the analysis of pathogens' mechanisms of action within their parasitic hosts.
Scientists now suspect that other pathogens—such as Plasmodium, which causes malaria—may operate in a similar way, also utilizing cholesterol acquired from the host. This means that the mechanism they have just identified may also be applicable to combating other arthropod-borne diseases.
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