Protein cement is the trick to how ticks stick
New insight into bioadhesive proteins could aid development of future biomedical tissue sealants
When ticks latch onto a host, they produce a saliva bioadhesive that hardens into a cement cone to keep them attached. Now, researchers in the Netherlands have unravelled one of the underlying molecular mechanisms that enables this liquid secretion to solidify and help ticks stick. The team believes that the finding could be useful for developing new tick control strategies or biomedical tissue sealants.