Aquaporin 2 gene as a potential target to control ticks and tick-borne parasites / Hala Elsayed Hussein Elsayed ; Supervised Fatma Kamel Adham , Nagwa A. Rashdan , Emtithal M. Abdelsamea

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Science - Department of Entomology

Ticks are blood-feeding arthropods that can affect human and animal health both directly by blood-feeding and indirectly by transmitting pathogens. The cattle tick Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus is one of the most economically important ectoparasites of bovines worldwide and it is responsible for the transmission of the protozoan Babesia bovis, the etiological agent of bovine babesiosis. Aquaporins (AQPs) are water channel proteins implicated in physiological mechanisms of osmoregulation. Members of the AQP family are critical for blood-feeding arthropods considering the extreme osmoregulatory changes that occur during their feeding. We investigated the pattern of expression of a newly identified AQP2 gene of R. microplus (RmAQP2) in different tick tissues and stages; we examined in vivo the biological implications of silencing expression of RmAQP2 silencing during tick feeding on either uninfected or B. bovis-infected cattle. In silico gene analyses were performed by multiple alignments of amino acid sequences and topology prediction. Levels of RmAQP2 transcripts in different tick tissues and stages were analyzed by reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR. Patterns of expression of RmAQP2 protein were investigated by immunoblots. Gene silencing was performed by RNA interference and in vivo functional analysis carried out by feeding ticks on either uninfected or B. bovis-infected cattle

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