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Comment
. 2010 Sep;120(9):3087-90.
doi: 10.1172/JCI44402. Epub 2010 Aug 25.

Fitness and freezing: vector biology and human health

J Stephen Dumler  1
Affiliations
Comment

Fitness and freezing: vector biology and human health

J Stephen Dumler. J Clin Invest. 2010 Sep.

Abstract

Microbes transmitted to mammals by arthropods contend with many factors that could impede survival. To survive, host fitness with infection must outweigh costs. In this issue of the JCI, Neelakanta et al. demonstrate that ticks infected with Anaplasma phagocytophilum show enhanced fitness against freezing injury owing to induced expression of tick "antifreeze glycoprotein." This allows A. phagocytophilum to successfully propagate and survive to cause disease in nonnatural hosts, such as humans. How an intracellular microbe with a small genome subverts host cell function for survival provides insight into the control of some cellular function programs and underscores how vector biology can have an impact on human health.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Confirmed and unconfirmed cases of tick-borne rickettsial diseases (TBRD) in the United States, 1920 to 2009.
HME, human monocytic ehrlichiosis; nos, not otherwise specified. Graph generated using data obtained from Public Health Service (PHS) and Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) records ( www.CDC.gov/mmwr/).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Relative sizes of sequenced eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and Achaea genomes.
Graph generated using data available from the NCBI genome database ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/genome).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

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