TickTools: development of tools to monitor and control tick-borne diseases of humans and livestock
TickTools has characterised the tick microbiome and interactome to support the UK response to tick-borne encephalitis virus, louping ill virus, and newly detected viral threats.
About the project
Research question
What can the tick microbiome tell us about the dispersal, potential spread, and control of zoonotic viruses?
The UK is threatened by both recently emerged tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) and the endemic pathogen of sheep, louping ill virus (LIV). Researchers from the Animal and Plant Health Agency, University of Nottingham, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and the University of Glasgow have teamed up to collect data to support the UK response to these threats.
The TickTools project has characterised the microbiome and interactome, all of the molecular interactions of the microbiome including those with pathogenic viruses and bacteria that cause disease, of ticks from across the UK.
Their work has revealed an impressive diversity of UK tick microbiomes, with particular focus on viruses. The project has discovered two novel zoonotic viruses, Chimay rhabdovirus and Alongshan virus, in British ticks.
Project details
- Project lead(s)
- Dr Nicholas Johnson
- Lead organisation
- Animal and Plant Health Agency
- Award value
- £1,048,010
- Period
- March 2023 to December 2026
People and organisations
Team members
- Nicholas JohnsonPrincipal Investigator
- Janet DalyCo-Investigator
- Kevin GoughCo-Investigator
- Adam BlanchardCo-Investigator
- Alain KohlCo-Investigator
- Benjamin BrennanCo-Investigator
Participating organisations
- Animal and Plant Health Agency
- University of Nottingham
- Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
- University of Glasgow
Research focus
- Tick-borne encephalitis virus
- Louping ill virus
- Tick microbiome
- Serological tools
How this connects to VBD Hub
The project has already reported sequence datasets and data-sharing engagement with VBD Hub. These outputs are a good fit for indexing through VBD Hub.
VBD Hub was not directly part of these research consortia. It was funded as follow-on shared infrastructure to support discovery, documentation, and reuse of outputs across the wider UK One Health vector-borne disease community.
Project links
Data outputs and expected datasets
- Sequence data - all sequences generated by TickTools are submitted to NCBI GenBank within the nucleotide and SRA databases.
- Phage display data is posted on the University of Nottingham data website.
- Distribution and abundance of the sheep tick Ixodes ricinus sampled during the project will be shared with VBD Hub.