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ViewAttendees 2

10-Minute Paper

Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

MUVE: Vector and Pathogen Surveillance

Expanding range of tick-borne emerging pathogens in Eastern Europe and around the Black Sea

Wednesday, November 8, 2023
8:24 AM - 8:36 AM ET
Location: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Chesapeake 4-5
In-Person

Metagenomic sequencing allows analysis of the nucleic acid content of any sample, without prior information on pathogens. It can be utilized for surveillance of ticks, which can also be used as sentinels to screen microorganisms encompassing multiple hosts. We used a nanopore sequencing (NS) based strategy to screen field-collected ticks from countries in Eastern Europe and around the Black Sea, including Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine and Georgia. A total of 1337 ticks belonging in 11 species were analyzed in 217 pools. Sequences from Rickettsial pathogens of the spotted fever group were detected in 45.6% of the pools, becoming the most frequently-identified tick borne pathogen in the cohort. Rickettsia asiatica, present in 11.5% of the pools, was documented for the first time in Eastern Europe, with genome and plasmid contigs characterized. Francisella tularensis was identified in 7.3% of the pools, in addition to other tick-borne bacteria Anaplasma phagocytophilum (2.3%), Spiroplasma ixodetis (0.9%) and Neoehrlichia mikurensis (0.4%).Tick-borne viral pathogens comprised the recently-described viruses Tacheng tick virus 2 (5.9%), Jingmen tick virus (0.9%) and Tacheng tick virus 1 (0.4%). Available virus contigs enabled reliable phylogeny construction. In conclusion, non-targeted metagenomic screening by nanopore sequencing was documented as a robust strategy capable of providing a broader view of the tick-borne pathogen spectrum and microbial genome information in pools with sufficient pathogen levels.