Tick What?

There is always a book to round out a discussion. Take the case of subject matter “tick spit,” which name alone simply screams for explanation please; it begs a book recommendation for elaboration.

In a recent article in “Chemical & Engineering News,” Vol. 102, No. 23 (July 29, 2024), entitled “What’s That Stuff, Tick Cement,” staff writer Fionna Samuels writes about what she also calls “tick spit.” Tick cement or spit is a protein-rich tick mouth secretion that polymerizes to form a glue that holds the tick fast to the victim’s skin while it slurps up its meal of mammalian blood. The bond formed is an added evolutionary advantage to the tick’s already good attachment strategy of burying its barbed, toothy mouth into the victim’s skin. Mosquitos and bedbugs, by contrast, only dip their mouths into the host for a relatively quick sip.

The glue is being studied by veterinary parasitologist Albert Mulenga of Texas A&M University. His team has identified about 150 different proteins in tick spit, but it has a long way to go to figuring out which are the key proteins for adhesion.

Mulenga’s team is interested in at least two potentially practical applications that might come out of this research. One is the possibility of identifying a valuable bioadhesive for medical use. The other is identifying a pathway to an effective vaccine to defeat tick attachment, and thereby prevent entirely the characteristic extraction of blood as tick food.

How does this little bit of a maybe gross example of nature at work get us to recommending a good book to read to round out the discussion? Well, that comes from sharing the article with a teenager who I know to be interested in chemistry, maybe including biochemistry. He responded to this tick story with the following: “but if the scientists are trying to make bioadhesive and vaccinations to stop the ticks, I feel like that would hurt the natural order in nature.” To which the answer is: “Where you live, for example, used to be all prairie grass with all kinds of animals that were not dogs and house cats. The air that you breathe did not contain over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Whatever humans there were then probably lived to only 25 years or so of age. Changing the success rate of ticks is just one part of a much bigger story.”

The bigger story is in T.C. Boyle’s novel entitled “When the Killing’s Done” (2011). The plot line from the jacket of the Penguin Books 2012 paperback Issue is: “Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading the efforts to save the endangered native creatures of California’s Channel Islands from invasive species such as rats and feral pigs. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a local businessman who is fiercely opposed to the killing of any animals whatsoever and will go to any lengths to subvert Alma’s plans.” And does.

The book is a “tale about the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world.” Seeking leverage over the “natural world” through knowledge about “tick spit” is just one small dip into the toolkit. And you, too, might like Samuels’ C&E News article as a taste, but T.C. Boyle’s book even more so for its fuller immersion into the story of how humans have tampered with “tick spit” everywhere. And there is no going back. For better or for worse, that is the point.