# Overlooked No More: Discovering Pathogens in a National Tick Collection

> **NIH NIH R03** · OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY STILLWATER · 2020 · $74,800

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Current understanding of the diversity and geographic distribution of tick-borne pathogens in the
United States remains limited. The majority of studies reported to date have focused on Borrelia
burgdorferi sensu stricto, the causative agent of Lyme disease and the most commonly
diagnosed vector-borne infection in the country. However, ticks in the United States also
transmit several other pathogens that present additional, significant public health concerns,
including spotted fever group Rickettsia spp., Ehrlichia spp., Babesia spp., and Anaplasma
phagocytophilum. Moreover, novel viral and bacterial disease agents continue to be described
from ticks. Here, we propose a small, self-contained project to perform a secondary analysis of
an existing dataset, namely, several thousand ticks collected from more than one thousand
dogs and several hundred cats in 49 of the 50 states in 2018 and 2019. Targeted, well-
characterized assays will be performed to detect established tick-borne pathogens in the ticks.
In addition, we will use next generation sequencing to characterize the metagenome of a subset
of the ticks and then query the raw data with e-probes to discover novel agents that may be
present. The findings from this work will inform future field efforts to more fully understand the
geographic and temporal diversity of tick-borne pathogens in North America; greater
understanding of the true public health menace presented by tick-borne infections is expected to
result.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9876202
- **Project number:** 1R03AI149638-01
- **Recipient organization:** OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY STILLWATER
- **Principal Investigator:** SUSAN E LITTLE
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $74,800
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-02-25 → 2022-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9876202

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9876202, Overlooked No More: Discovering Pathogens in a National Tick Collection (1R03AI149638-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9876202. Licensed CC0.

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