Differentiation of Medically Important Euro-Asian Tick Species Ixodes ricinus, Ixodes persulcatus, Ixodes hexagonus, and Dermacentor reticulatus by Polymerase Chain Reaction

Abstract Understanding epidemiology of the tick-borne pathogens requires the accurate identification of the vector ticks. Morphological analysis of ticks is difficult and often leads to misidentification. Molecular techniques offer an alternative approach of tick identification. To date, no practical and reliable molecular assays for discrimination of Euro-Asian ticks are available. Our aim was to develop such an assay for discrimination between four Euro-Asian tick species of high medical importance such as Ixodes ricinus, Ixodes persulcatus, Ixodes hexagonus, and Dermacentor reticulatus. As a basis, we have chosen conventional species-specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a technique providing a good combination of simplicity and reliability. The DNA information available on ticks was searched for orthologous loci containing stretches of sequence dissimilarity sufficient for designing species-specific primers. ITS2 locus (second internal transcribed region of the rRNA gene cluster) was found to be t...