While many of us spend the warmer months striving to avoid ticks, University of Missouri senior Kendall Mara spent the past 2 summers hunting them. Mara, a microbiology major, scoured Missouri’s fields and forests to collect thousands of ticks for studies in the labs of Deborah Anderson, PhD, and Brenda Beerntsen, PhD, both professors at the University of Missouri (MU) Department of Veterinary Pathobiology.
“The first summer we collected ticks in northwestern Missouri to send species data back to the CDC, as they had some gaps in tick surveillance they wanted to fill,” Mara said. “We dragged the ground and vegetation with white cloths and collected ticks from those. This past summer we performed tick surveillance in 3 Missouri counties and will be doing pathogen screening for those samples this summer. The temperatures were in the 80s and 90s, [with] high humidity and the sun beating down. We had to wear Tyvek suits to protect us from ticks. We were sweaty and exhausted, but we shared a lot of laughs. I’ll always remember loving the long hours doing fieldwork because our team kept our spirits up with humor.”
Mara’s efforts were in support of the university’s Center for Vector-borne and Emerging Infectious Diseases (CVEID). The CVEID began in 2019 as a multidisciplinary, one-health approach to combating diseases like Bourbon and Heartland viruses, ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Zika. The CVEID brings together researchers and clinicians from MU’s School of Medicine and Colleges of Veterinary Medicine, Agriculture Food and Natural Resources, and Engineering. It was 1 of 5 projects the university helped fund with cost-sharing commitments from the partner colleges.
Disease outbreaks in people, livestock, pets, and wildlife increase when changing ecological conditions combine with genetic and behavioral factors. Population expansion, climate change, and other ecological shifts favor the spread of new pathogens and the reemergence of bacterial and viral diseases spread by arthropods. Missouri’s climate and environment make the Show-Me State a hotspot for arthropods, primarily ticks, mosquitos, and fleas, and the pathogens they transmit.
“Essentially, we’re building 3 projects simultaneously,” said Anderson, the CVEID’s principal investigator. “We’re conducting vector and pathogen surveillance with a focus on discovery and diagnosis of new bacterial and viral threats. We’re addressing mechanisms of mosquito transmission of infection and ecological factors that drive outbreaks and spread of vector-borne diseases in Missouri, and we’re developing technology to prevent viral replication. Finally, we’re focusing on bacteria and viruses transmitted by arthropods to understand risks of disease and potential for the emergence of antimicrobial resistance from the vector life cycle. We’re asking, how do things evolve? How does vaccine protection work and wane? Are diagnostics specific enough? There’s so much evolution that goes on between the microbe and its vector host, to understand how diseases spread through an animal population, it’s essential to understand what’s going on in the vector host. We have partners in the College of Engineering working on the technology side to develop diagnostic tools that are field applicable and inexpensive. We’re partnering vaccine-developing people with technology-developing people.”
The CVEID is actively building networks beyond campus borders with county and state agencies and researchers in other states and in countries where tropical climates contribute to heavy mosquito populations.
The center also involves MU students in research. “We partner vet students with undergraduate students,” Anderson said. “They collect samples in the field and investigate medical records produced by the vet school related to tick-transmitted disease in pets. At the same time, they are learning molecular techniques to identify ticks in the area. They’re currently characterizing mosquitoes for RNA viruses like West Nile. In ticks, they’re primarily screening for bacteria that are commonly found here, like Ehrlichia, which affects dogs severely.”
For Mara, who will begin a PhD program in microbiology and molecular genetics, the experience has been transformational. “I realized I had a passion for vector-borne disease that I don’t think I would have ever found without it.”
