Journal Article

mGem: A tale as old as blood—do tick-borne pathogens exploit arthropod antioxidant defenses?

Steiert, Brianna P., Coyle, Cameron G., Vosbigian, Kaylee A., Warren, Ashley L., Osbron, Chelsea A., Shaw, Dana K.

2026

Overview

Effective control of tick-borne disease begins by first understanding how ticks acquire, harbor, and transmit pathogens. Over their lifetime, ticks encounter many sources of oxidative stress-inducing stimuli. Here, we explore the factors contributing to oxidative stress in ticks-including blood digestion, pesticide exposure, and pathogen infection-and then discuss how ticks counter this stress by employing antioxidant defenses. We highlight how non-tick-borne pathogens manipulate the host antioxidant response for survival and speculate that tick-borne pathogens may be acting similarly in the arthropod. We conclude by conjecturing that the robust antioxidant defenses that ticks have evolved to withstand the stress associated with hematophagy may also be inadvertently supporting the pathogens they carry.

• Publisher: ASM
• Subject: Adaptation to Oxidative Stress / Antioxidant Enzymes / Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases / Editor’s Pick / Host-Microbial Interactions / Microbial Physiology and Genetics / Oxidative Stress / Oxidative Stress Response Mechanisms / Oxidative Stress Sensing and Regulation / Perspective / Protein Oxidation and Protection / Public Health Microbiology / Reactive Oxygen Species (Ros) / Special Series: mGems / Tick-Borne Infections / Tickborne Diseases / Zoonoses and Vector-Borne Diseases / Zoonotic and Vector-Borne Diseases