Sialic acid is a highly abundant and a common component of vertebrate glycans, where it can be found in the terminal positions of the cell surface glycoconjugates. The amount of sialylated glycoconjugates as well as their complexity vary between both different species and different tissue types within one individual. Considering the vertebrates, these well studied structures are know to be important for cell-cell interactions, cell adhesion and immunity. In contrary, sialic acid in arthropod glycans has been identified only in a limited number of species. In obligatory blood feeding parasites such as ticks, distinguishing between sialylated glycoproteins of tick and host origin is challenging due to huge volumes of ingested blood containing heavily sialylated structures of host origin. In the tick Ixodes ricinus, the presence of minor amount of tick´s sialylated structures has been shown previously in the ovaries and salivary glands, however, their role remains completely unknown. In this thesis, we study the importance and role of both the tick-originating and the host sialylated glycoproteins for I. ricinus, the tick commonly found in Czech Republic. We show that the tick-originating sialylated glycoproteins are present in I. ricinus eggs, and that their amount changes over time after laying the eggs. Furthermore, these molecules were localized in cryosections of 14 days old eggs and in the larvae using confocal microscopy. In addition, we shed some further light on the role of sialic acid for ticks in the tick blood meal. According to our results, the glycan part of glycoproteins is the key in recognition of these molecules by tick cells.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:262674 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | ONDRUŠ, Jaroslav |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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