Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons^™

Multiple Acquisitions Of Pathogen-Derived Francisella Endosymbionts In Soft Ticks, Jonathan G. Gerhart, H. Auguste Dutcher, Amanda E. Brenner, Abraham S. Moses, Libor Grubhoffer, Rahul Raghavan

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Bacterial endosymbionts of ticks are of interest due to their close evolutionary relationships with tick-vectored pathogens. For instance, whereas many ticks contain Francisella-like endosymbionts (FLEs), others transmit the mammalian pathogen Francisella tularensis. We recently sequenced the genome of an FLE present in the hard tick Amblyomma maculatum (FLE-Am) and showed that it likely evolved from a pathogenic ancestor. In order to expand our understanding of FLEs, in the current study we sequenced the genome of an FLE in the soft tick Ornithodoros moubata and compared it to the genomes of FLE-Am, Francisella persica—an FLE in the soft tick Argus (Persicargas) …