Establishment of tick cell line and survey for tick-borne viruses in Japan

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25893151
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Parasitology (including sanitary zoology)
• Research Institution: Yamaguchi University
• Principal Investigator: KUWATA Ryusei 山口大学, 理工学研究科, 研究員 (00711219)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-08-30 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: マダニ / 培養細胞 / ウイルス / 感染症

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, I conducted to ① establish of tick cell line and ② survey for tick-borne viruses in Japan.
① I temporary cultured of the cells from the tissue of Amblyomma testudinarium in VP-12 medium with 15% FBS and 15% TPB. However, these cells were flowed because of the weak attachment to the bottom of culture dish. Now I tried to culture again with the same condition on ploy-L-lysine-coated dishes.
② We collected ticks at several sites of Japan, mainly Yamaguchi prefecture, by tick flagging technique or ticks parasitizing the wild animals. Collected ticks were identified and used for virus isolation or detection of viral gene. As a result, we successfully detected viral genes of undescribed species from RNA extraction of ticks collected in several place of Japan. Now we analyzed the characteristics of these virus species.

Free Research Field

衛生動物学