Sarah Durski

Years in the program: 2024
Mentor: Dr. Adela Oliva Chavez
Title of Projects/Products:
None completed yet; I am currently working to see if there is a difference in the microRNA
profile of people with and without tick-borne disease.
Where I am now:
My project involves creating a vaccine for cows which acts against Lone Star Ticks, or Amblyomma americanum. We are using extracellular vesicles from ticks to do so. So far, we have infested four calves with these ticks. We have taken the ticks off of the cows and dissected the ticks to collect their midguts and salivary glands. From these tick organs, we extracted the tick extracellular vesicles. We determined the amount of protein in these vesicles as well as the size of the vesicles. We also used electron microscopy to view the vesicles. We have begun western blots to compare the contents of the extracellular vesicles to known proteins.
Next, these contents will be used to create a vaccine for cows. Hopefully, the cows will create an immune response to the tick extracellular vesicles and cause the Lone Star Ticks to perish when they latch onto the cows.