Due to increased travel, climatic, and environmental changes, the incidence of tick-borne disease in both humans and animals is increasing throughout Europe. Therefore, extended surveillance tools are desirable. To accurately screen tick-borne pathogens, a large scale epidemiological study was conducted on 7050 Ixodes ricinus nymphs collected from France, Denmark, and the Netherlands using a powerful new high-throughput approach. This advanced methodology permitted the simultaneous detection of 25 bacterial, and 12 parasitic species (including; Borrelia, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Rickettsia, Bartonella, Candidatus Neoehrlichia, Coxiella, Francisella, Babesia, and Theileria genus) across 94 samples. We successfully determined the prevalence of expected (Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Rickettsia helvetica, Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis, Babesia divergens, Babesia venatorum), unexpected (Borrelia miyamotoi) and rare (Bartonella henselae) pathogens in the three European countries. Moreover we detected Borrelia spielmanii, Borrelia miyamotoi, Babesia divergens, and Babesia venatorum for the first time in Danish ticks. This surveillance method represents a major improvement in epidemiological studies, able to facilitate comprehensive testing of tick-borne pathogens, and which can also be customized to monitor emerging diseases.

Prophenoloxidase (proPO), an enzyme that is the terminal component of the so-called proPO activating system, a defense and recognition system in crustaceans and insects, has been purified and cloned from a crayfish blood cell cDNA library. The deduced amino acid sequence codes for a polypeptide with a mass of 80,732 Da, which is close to 76 kDa, the apparent mass of the purified enzyme. proPO contains two copper atoms, and two putative copper-binding sites were found in the deduced amino acid sequence. Sequence comparisons show that these putative copper-binding sites are similar to the corresponding sites in arthropod hemocyanins and also, although the sequence similarities are less extensive, similar to tyrosinases from vertebrates and microorganisms. The purified enzyme is a typical tyrosinase because it hydroxylates monophenols and oxidizes o-diphenols but does not oxidize p-diphenols. If a homogeneous preparation of crayfish proPO were incubated with a homogeneous sample of the proPO activating enzyme, a serine proteinase, the cleavage of proPO by this trypsin-like enzyme was found to occur between Arg-176 and Thr-177.

A 155-kDa proteinase inhibitor, pacifastin, from plasma of the freshwater crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus , was found to be composed of two covalently linked subunits. The two subunits are encoded by two different mRNAs, which were cloned and sequenced. The heavy chain of pacifastin (105 kDa) is related to transferrins, containing three transferrin lobes, two of which seem to be active for iron binding. The light chain of pacifastin (44 kDa) is the inhibitory subunit, and has nine cysteine-rich inhibitory domains that are homologous to each other and to low molecular weight proteinase inhibitors isolated from the grasshopper, Locusta migratoria . The nine light chain domains and the Locusta inhibitors share a characteristic cysteine array (Cys-Xaa _9–12 -Cys-Xaa ₂ -Cys-Xaa-Cys-Xaa _6–8 -Cys-Xaa ₄ -Cys) distinct from any described proteinase inhibitor family, suggesting that they constitute a new family of proteinase inhibitors. Pacifastin is the first known protein that has combined properties of a transferrin-like molecule and a proteinase inhibitor.

Performances of different salmonella detection methods were evaluated by applying them to of artificially contaminated faecal specimens from cattle, pigs and poultry. The NMKL71 method, being the standard reference method for detection of salmonella in the official Swedish control program, was compared with the proposed ISO method using MSRV-selective enrichment for culturing, and also with three commercial ELISA- based systems, Bioline Selecta, Bioline Optima and Vidas, a commercial PCR-based method, BAX® system, and three different strategies using PCR detection using a non-commercial PCR system.